Hello Brothers & Sisters,

The issues that we face as a union in the coming months are difficult ones, but rest assured we are prepared to handle all of them. Grievances have been filed on a number of issues job reversions, timely job posting, FMLA issues, 204 details, and casual overtime. The casual overtime issue has been sent to Arbitration and is waiting to be heard. I will be discussing at Step 2 over the next few weeks FMLA, job reversions, 204 details, and job postings. The posting delays are due to Gary Fahey not doing what needs to be done before the deadline, once the deadline passes there is nothing that can be done for that cycle. It seems that he is never around at the deadline we are working to correct the problem. There are several 204 details that people went beyond the 120 days so we are grieving for them to be put out of their jobs and get the jobs posted.

We have been successful on a number of issues at Step 2. We have gotten several members paid for supervisors working the mail thank you Gary Fahey and Katrina Dow. We had a few discipline cases thrown out. We also won a case on the proper submission of CA-7’s. The wizards of injury comp office were violating the law. They were telling injured employees that they could not send their form forward because the five days have passed from the date the employee signed the form. The law states that five days from the date the agency receives the form will see if they adhere to the agreement and the law.

The local grieved the snowstorm of December 2007 a few months ago managements Step 2 designee and I agreed to remand the grievance back to Step 1 for the parties to gather the information and to see if a settlement could be reached. Management never got back to the steward at Step 1 the grievance was moved back to Step 2 and we will be discussing the grievance in the next few days.

In Solidarity,

Raymond Kearns

Vice President PRIAL 387