A&R held its 3rd Contract Negotiations meeting with the State on January 27th. This meeting was very similar to the other meetings where proposals from both sides were introduced by the respective parties. This session completed the process for new proposals and the negotiations will commence utilizing the proposals submitted at this point. The discussions that followed were brief and limited to clarification rather than searching for common ground. As examples: A&R questioned why the State proposes a switch to utilizing the State Mediation/Arbitration Board rather than OLR, where does an employee raise concerns regarding their job title/duties if the Reclass procedures are eliminated, and isn’t it unfair to the grievance process if witnesses choose not to attend a grievance hearing because they don’t want to use their vacation time to attend.
In response to our proposals regarding Personnel Files, the State questioned whether we have had instances where employees were given incomplete files for their review (the answer is “yes”). The State wanted clarification regarding “memorial services” relating to Funeral Leave.
The lead attorney on both sides then addressed the opposite’s proposals. Our attorney explained how the State’s offerings are anti-women, anti-family, anti-labor and pre-1975 wisdom. It was explained that if the State needs hard zeros on wages, then it would be fundamentally incompetent for us to additionally help them neutralize our remaining contract language. The State’s representation was that new economic realities exist and that the State’s structural imbalance needs to be reflected in these contracts, further stating that they seek to roll back our contracts to better reflect private sector union contracts. The State’s proposals have little to do with structural imbalance. The proposals they made remove any voice an employee has in the workplace. It is the ideology of a third-world country and the State’s explanation of why their changes were needed was quite hollow.