I am very happy to announce that we have agreed to a settlement of the Blizzard Grievance. OCA has agreed to credit back a total of 5 hours to our members who work full time (2.5 hours to our members who work part time) if they charged their Annual Leave, Comp.Time, or PTP time on January 4, 2018. In Feb. 2018, members were already credited back 2 hours (1 hour for part time employees). As a result of this settlement, these same individuals will receive an additional 3 hours credit back (1.5 hours for part timers). We are told that this time should be credited back by early next week. Continue to check your accruals to make sure you get your credit. We will have a list of members getting time back at the General Membership Meeting on April 11 for your review. Members are also welcome to come to the union office to look over the list.
It is my belief that this settlement could not have been reached without our persistence. We were told by many people that we were wasting our time yet we continued to push. We lost at Step 1 and then took it to Step 2. I believe that as a result of the testimony from some of our members at the Step 2 hearing, OCA better understood that there was a real problem here. To their credit, they took another look at the circumstances surrounding this grievance and decided to work with us to find a way to settle this grievance and hopefully avoid further problems going forward. As part of this settlement, OCA and the union have now agreed to new contract language under section 9.5(g)(1) Extraordinary Circumstances that will go a long way to that end. Please click here to see the side letter for more details.