Dec 2023/Jan 2024 - Newsletter of Branch 887
We all made it to the end of the year. It’s been a wild ride this year. We’ve gone from having no CCAs to having around 16. We started the year with a Union crew with little to no experience to having filed over 130 grievances. And I think we can all agree that this December was much better than last year.
Thank you all for your hard work getting through the peak season. Thank your fellow carriers that took extra, the CCAs for putting in the extra hours, and the ODL'rs who maxed out whenever possible.
Getting Work Done
Zach, Tom, and Dave didn’t take the holidays off of filing grievances, just like management didn’t take the holidays off for violating the contract. They met on a bunch of informals and formals ranging from cross crafting, overtime, and a number of discipline related issues. We are sending up about 4 grievances per week, it’d be nice to not send up so many, but until things change this is what we have to work with. Jen has only 6 settled grievances.
We got back 16 Step Bs this month. Some carriers saw some payments on their checks, and we continue to hit back on management for messing with the Union for Union time, information, and some hits for dignity and respect. We saw a real stinker decision this month, and it turns out you can appeal Step B decisions, who knew? We hope to see some punitive decisions soon, because management doesn’t learn until there is money involved.
New Year Resolutions
There is a lot to look forward to in this new year for the Union. We have a couple of arbitrations coming up in February and March. We anticipate seeing Step Bs coming down on a regular basis, but what we want for this next year is to bring the Union together like never before. A new national contract will be dropping this year too.
We need:
Someone willing to plan parties and activities. We are currently grievance focused, but we want some fellowshipping done.
People willing to learn. We can no longer expect “The Union” to step up and get things done. We are the Union. We are only as good as people want to be involved.
Skills. Everyone has something they are good at, or something they have experience with. We need people to help out with organization, filing, anything so that the President and the Stewards can focus on grievances.
Rewriting the LMOU. We need people’s input. We need this document cleaned up and ready to go this year. Contract negotiations will be ending soon and then we will have 30 days to have our LMOU negotiations, if we can’t come to a consensus then we will most likely send it to arbitration.
Remember that we have local union meetings every second Thursday of the month at 5pm at the Startup Building (https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZQ2HNTpYAFYUmWDDA). We also will be streaming the meeting via Google Meet for those that can't make it physically. (https://meet.google.com/skx-evam-kvn)
These meetings are important to make your voice heard and to help out.
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