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News & Events |
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COT Members Approve Merger with Click! Broadband
Technicians August 19, 2010
80 Yes votes were required to win from the COT Unit,
and 5 for the Click! unit. |
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Click! Network Broadband Technicians Face Uphill Battle March 1, 2010 Our newest members of Local 120, the Broadband Technicians of Click! Network, have been getting a hard time from City management lately. Since winning recognition as represented employees, Click! management has spared no opportunity in attempting to ignore their newly acquired union membership status. A merger election will soon be held between the City Bargaining Unit and the Click! Unit, to bring both groups under one contract. Cards Signed by an overwhelming majority of both units. The management at Click! Network are attempting to block the merger election, stating that the Broadband Technicians do not have a 'community of interest' with the other IT workers in the City Unit, even though the work they perform is remarkably similar. A PERC hearing will be held on March 18th, where the City will argue it's case against the merger. Click! Network is costing the City of Tacoma thousands of dollars in unnecessary legal expense, by contesting the merger election, and forcing the Click! Network workers to negotiate a completely new, separate contract, for ONLY 9 PEOPLE! An inquiry to the City regarding the practicality of this effort was responded with the following: "reasonable minds can differ". Let's put an end to this nonsense, and get on with the merger! UPDATE 7/10/10: |
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Pam Murray Wins AOR Grievance On September 29, 2010 the City of Tacoma settled a Step 2 grievance requesting the Principal Technical applied rate for ADSA Pam Murray, IT Department. Even though she had met the qualifications for Principal Tech long ago, and had been requesting the applied rate through various venues, the City had not responded and advanced her to the Principal Tech level. The key criteria for receiving Principal Tech AOR is overseeing three or more Developers, and being responsible for a mission critical technology. Pam supervises 4 Developers; one of which is already receiving Senior Tech AOR for maintaining the GovME website, which has been designated as mission critical by Public Works management. The Union then filed a grievance at Step 2 in the grievance process, and after reviewing the facts in the situation, the City finally acquiesced, and granted her the applied rate. Winning this grievance will increase Pam's pay by 15.4%. |
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| Local 120 News Archive | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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City Loses
"Citywide Bumping" Arbitration, Celeste Returns To
Work!
Celeste was laid off in July 2006, as part of a massive staff cut requested by City management. She filed a grievance against the city because past practice has been to allow employees to bump across departmental lines in the event of a layoff, yet she was not allowed to bump when her position was eliminated. The Union presented various pieces of evidence supporting our claims, including written policies, memorandums, and city web pages that all acknowledged city-wide bumping rights for employees. As a result of the win, Celeste will have her employment status at the city restored, will receive back pay, and will retain the right to bump the least senior employee in her classification. UPDATE 5/27/07: Due to an unacceptable offer by the City, Celeste has elected to return to city employment. Update: 9/24/07: The Tacoma Fire Department has created a new position for Celeste to work in, at her original pay & classification. |
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Members Reject 2005 City Offer At the November 1, 2005 Local 120 City Bargaining Unit meeting (by far the most heavily attended Unit meeting in the last 10 years), Union members voted overwhelmingly to reject the City's current offer by a vote of 57 to 7. This clear mandate sends the Union Negotiating Team back to the table with a clear message for the City; we won't accept the City's stance of no COLA for 2006, and their inflexible position on the AOR issues.
Mayor Baarsma Speaks Out For Unions
At that point, Mayor Baarsma stated "I would like to comment on the Union issue". He then leaned over to City Manager Ray Corpuz and stated "That would be consistent with Re-inventing Government, right Ray?" WHAT A REFRESHING CHANGE! |
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Contract Negotiations Break Down, City Unwilling to Compromise At the March 7, 2005 negotiation session, the City turned down the Union's latest offer, and proposed a counter package that included a big take-away; Cost of living increases for 2006. When the Union declared this proposal unacceptable, the City declared impasse, and both parties jointly agreed a mediator should be brought in. As of May 18th, a mediator has been chosen, and the next mediated talks will begin on June 6th. |
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2002 Contract Vote; Approved: 80 - 4 On Tuesday, April 9, 2002 Local 120 COT voted to approve the contract proposed by the City. Next steps include approvals by the Utility Board and City Council, and implementation of the new wages. Retro checks are due sometime in July. Among the recent wins were improved language on contracting out of bargaining unit work, and 10% in step increases for Computer Support Technicians. The historical perspective... The Union's latest offer actually made it easier for the City to contract out work on short notice, however allowing the Union to give input to the contracting process as soon as the decision is made to outsource Union Jobs. The City turned down the offer to move from a process that is confrontational, and leads to potentially embarrassing showdowns in front of the Utility Board and City Council. The Union's offer would lend to a more neutral, 'behind closed doors' approach, where differences could be worked out in private. Unfortunately, the City's response was to try and take away current rights the Union enjoys, and replace them with a 'don't call us, we'll call you' approach. Union Rejects City Offer, AGAIN! We will return to the bargaining table in hopes of resolving these and other issues. Union Rejects City Offer A mediator has been assigned to our negotiations, and the first mediated session began on Monday, October 8th, 2001. Keep up on all the latest proposal
information on our ListServ! City Management May Get MORE Huge Wage Adjustments December 5, 2001 - It was recently revealed that the City Council will be AGAIN asked to approve market based wage increases for un-represented classifications in the 10% to 15% range, on top of a 3% to 3.5% Cost of Living adjustment. This is yet another arrogant step in ignoring the deficiencies of our member's wages, which are currently below market for similar classifications. One year ago, in reference to last year's Management pay hikes, City HR Director Phil Knudsen was quoted by the News Tribune as saying: "raising salaries for city jobs may never be convenient. This would put pressure (on other salaries) no matter when we did it." "Despite a slowing economy, the job market is still competitive for attracting good employees, particularly in high-tech and specialty skill jobs," Knudsen said. December, 2000 - We just received a copy of the ordinance that the City Council approved with a 7 to 0 vote on December 19, 2000, giving the top level managers and directors anywhere from 10% to 21% raises, and $5,000.00 hiring bonuses. The hiring bonuses are "in order to hire qualified personnel possessing specialized technical or professional skills for unrepresented positions..." Hmmm... sounds familiar? Substitute Ordinance No. 26761 The great "unrepresented" rank & file classes got a meager 3%, while the upper classes were adjusted as follows:
The "Big 25" Directors and managers got anywhere between 17% and 48% increases, including the following:
Unknown percentage increases for the City Manager at $72.57 per hour, and the Utilities Director at $70.93 per hour, and the list goes on and on. They will be quick to point out that they are all giving up longevity pay, but who wouldn't trade 2% to 3% longevity for a nice raise, as noted above! The Union supports salary adjustments using Tacoma salary data from www.salary.com Ray Corpuz' City Employee Dress Code Is Dead Due in part to action taken by Local 120 officers, it appears the proposed dress code for City employees is DEAD! We composed a letter to Phil Knudsen, stating that changing the City's policy for dress in the workplace constitutes a change of working conditions, and must be negotiated with the Union. The draft policy seems to have quietly slid into oblivion, lingering on as a 'guide' to proper dress, rather than an enforceable policy. Contracting Out CIS Programming Work Cap Gemini's last gasp... now that the two-year experiment has wound down, Cap Gemini is on it's way out. The Utility Board recently approved a two-month extension to the agreement, through the end of 2002. The City decided not to exercise the two-year option in the Cap Gemini contract. Read the Letter of Agreement on our Cap Gemini home page. |
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New Employees Hired To Backfill Project Positions New Union Members who have signed up this month include: Jayne McCartney, Purchasing Analyst with Purchasing; David Nelson, ADSA with Customer Service; Vladimir Schwab, CST with Central IS; Dale Stubbart, ADSA with Customer Service; Debra Sims, CSA with General Services Fleet; Nina Oliver-Jones, ADSA with General Services; William O'Neil, CST with T&D Planning, Paul Vincent, CST with Public Works; John Hargis ADSA with the BSIP; and welcome back to Paul Federighi, Principal Tech CSP of BSIP, who has recently returned from working at AT&T Wireless, to lead the SAP BASIS Team. Joint Labor Signs BSIP Letter of Agreement TUI Consulting & SAP Named As BSIP Vendors6/14/02 Read more about the project on our BSIP News Page |
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Current grievances:
Class Action Grievance Denied by Arbitrator Several Central IS employees joined a Class Action grievance that disputes the denial of their applied rate requests. The Union maintained that the new contract language requires management to grant application of rate to those workers who are assigned as primary lead on a mission-critical complex system. As a rule, nearly all requests for application of rate have been denied by management, since the new contract language went into effect. At the arbitration hearings last year, the arbitrator denied all but one of the grievances, based upon his interpretation of the City-authored Application of Rate Language. Application of Rate Granted, Plus $3100.00 in Back Pay Monte Sotak, Computer Systems Programmer in Public Works Engineering recently won his grievance asking for $3100.00 in back pay granted to him by the HR sponsored, Application of Rate review board. The board recommended paying Monte for work performed in the capacity of Senior CSP on the City's GOVme website. However, once the back pay request hit the HR department, they put the kibosh on it, saying they didn't want to set a precedence, and trigger a flood of back pay requests. The Union filed a grievance, since Monte's supervisor, and the Director of Public Works had both approved the back pay request. The supervisor was forced to deny the grievance at the second step, after being told it was against the law to assist or advocate on a subordinate's behalf. We escalated the grievance to the Department Head level. They responded to the grievance, and while disagreeing with the timing and validity of the grievance itself, still agreed to pay Monte because "it was the right thing to do". Congratulations, Monte, and our appreciation to Public Works management, for cutting through the red tape in HR and doing the right thing. Refuse Fleet Shop A Vehicle Parts Assistant had been forced to give up a "paid lunch" which had been paid in lieu of a shift differential. |
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Local 120 Overturns Employee Termination A local 120 member recently faced termination for allegedly using City equipment to visit inappropriate websites on City time. This allegation was found to be based upon a flawed analysis of the web proxy log data, which tracks the websites an employee visits from their computer. The termination was reduced to a two month suspension, a far cry from losing one's job. Without Union support and representation, this member would have been coerced to voluntarily resign their position. |
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E-mail List
"List-Serv" service If you need assistance, contact John Ohlson at 253-382-2703. |
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2007 - Local
120 Recording Secretary Celeste Suliin Burris has won her
grievance arbitration, challenging the City's assertion that
there are no city-wide bumping rights when employees are laid
off.
