Business Managers Report

 

We will be starting a 3rd District Youth Caucus. Vice President Jim Zabinski will be the Chair. Their first call was Wednesday, February 11th. Basically involves community activity on the weekends and nights.  It is a way to get the younger members involved in the union.

 

We will be starting a 3rd District Women’s Committee. Recording Secretary Sue Sweeney will be the Chair. Founding members will be Robyn Palmer from the West, Gina Clifford from Central and Cindy Metchick from the East. They will be meeting to talk about women’s issues in the workplace, helping with New Member Orientation putting it all together and will be participating in community events.

 

I apologize for missing last month’s meetings, which was due to a gas arbitration. The rest of my time was spent in negotiations for St. Lawrence Gas and Bear Swamp, which is the Brookfield property in Massachusetts we were able to organize. We are making some progress on Bear Swamp.

 

Transco Company – has finally been organized which is made up of NGrid, Con Ed and Iberdrola. The President will be Steve Nachmias from Con Ed. We were able to meet with him to hear our issues in utility. I heard today that they might be evaluating work and now looking to see if we need to upgrade our transmission system.

 

We are having issues with falsification of records issues with one example of putting in a receipt for footwear they did not really purchase. Remember it is not worth your job. Please be careful.

 

 

Received Designer MOA back from the Company. The ABM’s are reviewing it now and looking to get to the Committee members as soon as possible.

 

Met with Keith MacAfee about the latest storm and sending crews to Albany to standby for nothing. Crews never went into double time or rest time. I was not happy. The Company expected to utilize crews. The storm never materialized and they sent the crews home. It created problems with call out lists. Kevin said that is not how they want to run the business. They did not violate the contract is the problem. I asked them to compensate crews for being out of town but they were not willing to budge.

 

We will be having a Leadership Meeting on February 26th with Ken Daly and all the Vice Presidents for NGrid. We will get a chance to air our concerns. I will share any outcome of the meeting at next month’s meeting.

 

Had an issue out West with EIT’s being placed and Company not going to give them their one time bid.  It was resolved.

 

PSC Staffing Audit – this is for staffing in-house. We have letters for you to sign to send to the PSC. It is also on our web. Company told me the PSC auditors want to meet with me. We will be able to tell them how we are understaffed and that we do not have enough bodies.

 

 

We ratified a contract with St. Lawrence Gas.  It is a 5 year agreement with 2% GWI each year. We were able to get an increase in meals, boot allowance, standby pay and callout minimum. They will be increasing medical cost share to 16% in 2017. We also had a clarification of their sick time policy along with a longer progression for clerical for new hires.