I thank outgoing President Laurie Simmons for granting me the opportunity to represent an OPS member in an Attendance Support Management Program meeting earlier this year.
It was a positive learning opportunity for me because it afforded me a more fulsome understanding of the impressive infrastructure (MERCs, LERCs and CERCs) in place to attend to the system-wide LR issues that inevitably pop up over time.
Our OCOT members are outside of that structure; its officers are tasked with creating a miniaturized version of that system, to enforce the members’ CA rights and benefits. We call that version the Employee Relations Committee (ERC).
For information on the OPS issues of the day, I encourage you to reach out to Jennie Miller, who can forward you information and put you in contact with participants in that structure.
Today, I am more of an authority on the OCOT issues-at-hand. We are working with our HR team to install a system where our members may view our progress to the fullest extent confidentiality and discretion will allow. For now, I leave you with one example:
Article 5.2.1 states that “At the time specified for the posting of seniority lists in Article 1, the Employer shall provide to the ERC a list of all Bargaining Unit staff, showing the name, start date, employment category, status and worksite/department.” This will work well with Article 4.2, “The monthly dues deduction list is to be copied to the Unit Steward of the Employee Relations Committee (ERC) at the same time that it is forwarded to the Union’s Accounting Department.” to show us who is paying dues, and what their rights are. We absolutely require this information to appropriately represent our OCOT members, and are working with Management towards CA compliance.
There are many more issues under discussion at the ERC level, many of which have been brought forward by our members.
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Your Local 503 Executive views each question, comment or concern brought forward as an act of participation. We intend to encourage such acts by responding every time, and providing you with updates as they arise, whenever you bring an issue forward. If you’ve brought forward an issue in the past that wasn’t resolved to your satisfaction, please re-submit by pressing ‘Reply’.