a payment to the IRS as part of the
settlement, it is anticipated that we will have another
good year. The Council will be going over the 1995
reports during our February meeting, along with the
budget for 1996. As a point of information we were under
budget by almost $38,000 in 1995 and came into the new
year with adequate funds on hand to do business as
needed.
Possible Expansion of Local
321
We have been unsuccessful in our
attempts to amalgamate with Local 319 out of Wyoming.
First, National would not provide us with a mailing list
for another Local and the Local themselves will not
respond to our requests for a copy of their mailing list.
This is understandable I guess, the officers in Local 319
would very possibly not have their jobs after
amalgamation as there are only about 30 members in
Wyoming. National does not want to support the
amalgamation without support from the respective
Local’s and we can’t get the support without
their mailing list. We will make one additional attempt
before abandoning this idea
Membership Perks
As you should all know, we were
able again to provide gift certificates to the entire
membership for Christmas. We have also ordered aprons
which should be available for release in late March or
early April of 1996. Pocket calendars have already been
ordered for 1997 for the membership. We, however, are
still struggling trying to find a company where the
members can go and purchase various clothing type items
with our logo on them. Currently we are checking into the
same company our National Office is using. Hopefully, we
can get this issue wrapped up soon. Soon we will begin
preparing for this years picnic. As we have elections
this year, the picnic will need to be held prior to the
end of June as we do not want to pass this issue on in
mid-stream. If possible it would be nice to have the
picnic immediately following results of the elections
that way everyone would be able to meet the incoming
officers. At this point we are taking submissions of
names for individuals for the picnic committee. If you
are interested, please forward your name to the Local for
consideration. It has also been determined that hospital
and death benefits are payable up to one year from date
of eligibility.
Other Membership Benefits
Recently the Local acquired a
dental plan for its members (Plan 500) which could be
purchase by the members and was independent of all other
health plans. After offering this dental program, another
dental program was brought to our attention which may be
of interest. You will see advertisement on this new plan
in the upcoming newsletter. Your National now offers a
short term disability program and information may be
obtained by calling 1-800-621-0839. As you may recall, we
advertised one of these programs a couple of years ago in
our newsletter. Another company has now approached the
Local about offering a Disability program to our members.
Information on this program should be arriving at your
home soon. It is not that we endorse or support these
types of companies we just want to give the maximum
options to our members.
Membership Cards
National is now the issuing body
for membership cards. Your Local Membership Card is still
valid, however, National has now accepted the
responsibility of issuing cards to the members. If you do
not have a membership card and want one, you can contact
the Local or call directly to National at 1-202-833-9095
to request your card.
Elections
Information is beginning to be
released on the elections to be held by the Local this
year. We have two elections upcoming. One is for
Delegates to this years National Convention and the other
is our Local Election of Officers. These elections will
shadow each other, with the Delegate Election about 30
days ahead of the Local Election process. The Executive
Board has met and selected Judges who will handle the
election processes this year. Once the Council meets and
determines the amount of delegates this Local will sent
to the convention, the Judges will be contacted. At that
point various election information will begin to be
released by the Judges (the dates and times of various
steps of the process). The first nominations meeting will
be held in March and the final results of both elections
will be completed by mid June. Our request to combine
both election processes was rejected by National so both
elections will be independently held. The two most recent
FYI Reviews will be incorporated in your next newsletter,
due to be released in March. These two FYI Reviews deal
with the governing language and requirements for the
election processes and some tentative timetables. This
information should help inform the membership as to the
rules and regulations for these two elections.
Modified Step 3 Process and
Arbitration
The modified process which allows
for the Local President to meet on all of Local
321’s Step 3 grievances has proven to be very
beneficial. We are still maintaining about a 50%
sustained rate at step 3 versus the prior 20 to 30
percent sustained rate. In recent months, our Arbitration
docket has become quite full (as many as 20 cases
docketed at one time), as management is becoming less
willing to settle certain issues. In fact, rumor has it
that the Senior District Labor Relations Specialist has
been training supervisors and in that training he
discourages settling grievances which involve money. With
a decline in settlements at the lower levels of the
grievance process, more cases make it to the docket for
arbitration than ever before. Even with more money on
hand, at $1,500 to $2,500 an arbitration this becomes a
cost restrictive issue at times. We have however, have
been quite successful in pre-arbitrating many of these
cases after they move to the docket for arbitration.
Currently, we have nine cases waiting for arbitration
dates and one waiting for an answer. The Local President
is the advocate for all of our arbitration hearings (with
the exception of those cases where the employee chooses
to hire their own lawyer), with various other officers
assisting. In the next few months it is hoped to begin
having additional advocates presenting our cases as well.
This will allow for cases to get off the docket faster
since there will be more preparation time and less of a
burden on a single advocate.
OWCP Representation
We have seen considerable increases
in the fees charged by Mike Watson and Associates over
the last year. In an attempt to address these increases,
research was done on possible acquiring a different firm
for this representation need. The big problem is that
very few lawyers deal with Federal OWCP Claims and those
that do are cost prohibitive. We will continue to rely on
the assistance of Mike Watson and Associates until such
time as another option becomes available. Below is review
of the changes in costs:
Members portion Locals
portion
before $100.00 a year $2,400.00 a
year
after $600.00 a year $1,200.00 a
year
This change may save the Local
money but it doesn’t help the member. Several
conversations were held with Mike on how we could keep
the members cost at $100.00. Mike even spoke with his
board about this issue but the request was rejected.
Either we keep it as it is now or the Local carries the
whole bill, which is not financially feasible.
Building Corporation
It has now come to our attention
that the Building Corporation has not been filed in about
13 years. This corporation is designed to protect the
members investment in our Local office. The prior filing
expired in 1989 and our building has been somewhat
unprotected since that time. We now are filing to have
our corporation reinstated and should have this wrapped
up in the near future.
Union Logo
The Local has been approached by
one of our members on the possibility of changing our
Logo. This was discussed and tabled for the upcoming
Council Meeting. The draft Logo is impressive looking,
however other factors need to be considered. Once a
decision is reached, you will be notified if there is to
be a change.