I attended a Safety meeting last month in Long Island with NGrid. They are looking to get more Safety Advocates, better communication along with many outstanding issues. They are hoping to meet quarterly.
Attended a 3rd District Business Mangers meeting to share ideas, issues in the 3rd District, contractor concerns to try and get more work in-house.
Women’s Committee will be offering some projects and will be looking to engage members. I have asked Steve Givney, Business Representative from Albany, to chair the Youth Committee. He is planning on meeting with them in March. I will be also setting up an IO New Member Orientation meeting on April 3rd in Syracuse and bringing the Youth Committee to attend.
We have two sets of negotiations in 2018; Brookfield expiring in May 31st and NYISO expiring in October 31st.
NGRID:
Employee surveys are out. Please complete them and be as honest as you can. Those surveys get a lot of exposure throughout the company. It did help in the Rate Case with us getting possibly more jobs. There were others out there and this is the only one you should be filling out.
We had some issues with Safety Glasses with the new Hoya Vendors. Some of the areas did not have the displays. Hopefully this issue has been corrected. If you have any more issues, please contact the hall.
We had a meeting with the new Labor Director for Upstate New York, Mike Rubino. He has a Manufacturing background and does not really know utilities so there will be a learning curve.
Transmission Line – thru the rate case they will be looking to put up 13 jobs throughout all divisions; 7 this year and 6 next year. They are asking for some things like a lock in which we are not interested in.
Regional Control – we are having talks on the 12 hour shift issue. We will be having meetings in the divisions to talk thru the issues.
W2’s – there were some issues and hopefully everyone has received them. Company is claiming they were all mailed out by January 31st. If you have not received it, let us know.
The Puerto Rico issue with taxes has been resolved. They will now not be collecting taxes and you should have been given a reimbursement if you did pay the taxes. If there are any issues, let the hall know. We have not heard yet if there will be another wave.
A meeting with Gas Business Enablement was held in Syracuse on February 15th. They now want to include Service along with Gas. I-Pads are being introduced in Gas and they want to do the same in Syracuse.
Company is doing a Supervisor Enablement. Our issue is they are bringing in people off the streets who do not know the work. They are also trying to entice union members to go into management. That is up to you but I caution you to thoroughly check all the benefits.
There are some rumors out there about a hiring freeze which is causing some confusion. The hiring freeze is for management only. Represented at this time is not affected.