Summer brought a raft of challenges to your Ecology shop stewards:
- We discovered that the current stewards list shows jurisdictions that don’t allow stewards to represent employees who work in a different county. We are now working with WFSE to change jurisdictions from “work county” to all the counties in the same region.
- Stewards have been grappling with how management is using “in-training” positions. We recently filed a grievance because an ES2 was being hired at the ES1 level as “in-training”, but HR would not take a candidate from the ES1 layoff list.
- Stewards helped an employee with a disability who was being asked to work under an “Emergency Plan” which included inappropriate judgments about the employee’s medical condition and work productivity. After intervention with HR the plan was withdrawn, and a Reasonable Accommodation plan put in place instead.
- Problems in the Spills Program continue with disagreements over steward communication, Standby Pay, and security procedures.
- Bargaining season is crazy season. HR has cracked down on union communication, insisting on a very narrow interpretation of stewards’ use of agency email. They seem to think that one steward can email one employee to represent them on a particular problem, but that a steward cannot email multiple employees about a meeting to discuss contract-related issues, which is clearly allowed by the contract. This being grieved.
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