March 25, 2019
UPDATE NO. 2
We have just completed our ninth (9th) day of bargaining so we are still in early stages of the process. We are pleased to report our bargaining committee is doing an excellent job preparing responses to management but progress continues to be slow. We have exchanged non-economic proposals and we are working on formulating our initial economic proposals. There is still outstanding information that the Unions requested from Kaleida management that are vital to the process.
When we finish bargaining on a specific article of the contract, we label it as a Tentative Agreement or a TA. The committees will continue to accumulate TAs until the entire contract has been negotiated and we are ready to bring it back to you for ratification.
Tentative Agreements have been reached on the following proposals since the last update.
•Article 9: Categories of Employment- Current Language
•Article 17 : Shift Rotation
•MOU # 8: Seasonal Employees – Current Language
Last week was focused on discussing intent of management and union proposals and making counter proposals where necessary.
We can inform you:
•Management expressed serious operational concerns specific to Personal Day utilization in the
time frames from Thanksgiving week through the Holidays and the first week of January.
•Management expressed serious concerns in the spike in PTU (Unscheduled Paid Time Off) from the end of October through March each of the past three (3) years with specific focus on the Holidays.
Management distributed graphs containing data with PTU and Personal day use to the bargaining committee. Management used the data to emphasize their concerns in efforts to support management’s proposals. This topic will likely remain as a discussion for the remainder of bargaining.
The Union committee is reviewing information and requesting more information while discussing next steps and supporting your rights and input as a union member.
The unions are intent on re-emphasizing the importance on the grievance procedure, respecting the collective bargaining agreement and day to day processes that are of vital importance to our membership.
To that end, a full day was devoted to a caucus of Union Leaders and Kaleida administration identifying and analyzing areas of contention, needed improvement and agreement to potential solutions that strengthen labor / management relations. While there is acknowledgement from all involved that we can fundamentally agree on certain process improvement initiatives, time will ultimately tell if management/administration will be vested in changes discussed and tentatively agreed to.
We will keep you posted on our progress throughout the bargaining process. If you need to get information to the bargaining committee, you can contact one of them directly or talk to your steward/mobilizer/delegate who will pass the information along!
CWA 1168 – (716) 639-1168
