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President’s Follow Up Items
Executive Council
March 2005
Betty Bannon - Item 5
- I met with Jacques Cloutier again on February 14th, regarding
the grievances that we are awaiting replies on. From our December
Executive Council report he provided me with the following:
Out of the 169 grievances listed:
- 49 belong to Classification (not his jurisdiction).
- 87 deal with grievances on "definition of a day". As
he indicated in an earlier telephone message to me, their intention
is to allow such grievances. Which left 33 grievances awaiting
reply.
- Out of the 33 grievances awaiting reply, 25 were beyond the
30 days timeframe. He advised that most of these grievances will
be answered/settled shortly.
- There are, however, some (of these 25 grievances) that we needed
to look at. See below. While our files indicate that there was
union presentation, their files show the opposite, or that they
only received presentation in part:
UTE File no. 2002-240 (Thunder
Bay)
UTE File No. 2002-242 (Toronto)
UTE File No. 2001-0119 (Sudbury)
UTE File No. 2002-0089 (Toronto)
UTE File No. 2002-0144 (Toronto)
UTE File No.2003-0252 (Surrey)
UTE File No. 2003-0224 (Ottawa)
(For confidentiality, I have removed the name of the grievors from
the above list.)
In regards to the “definition of a day” grievances,
we are working on a retroactive date. We have agreed to use the day that
the first grievance was filed. Our records show that the first grievance
that we received at the National Office was the one listed in the MOU
as being representative of the group. I would like each of you to
check with your locals to confirm the date of filing of
the first grievance they handled on this issue and advise me as soon
as possible of those dates.
I will be setting up a meeting shortly with the CRA Classification
Section to discuss the Job Content and Classification grievances that
are still outstanding. Although I admit that these grievances tend to
take longer, some of them appear to be unduly delayed.
As far as the list Jacques provided showing the discrepancies in
the presentations, I have the following to report: the grievance for
Surrey was referred to adjudication on December 21st so I will need to
contact the CRA to find out why they have a discrepancy on this file;
the others listed are being looked at by the LRO who will report to me
on the discrepancy.
- We also discussed the implications of the Schniedman PSSRB decision.
I advised him that as far as we were concerned the IAD interviews were
discipline in nature and not administrative and that we had every intention
of representing our members during these interviews. He advised me that
for all purposes the CRA agrees with the exception that during the interview
the member should be the one responding to the questions and not the
representative. This fact is specifically dealt with in the decision.
- At the December Council meeting it was agreed that the RVPs
would follow up with their locals on the collection of the 25% from the
Designates and that they would report the progress to me. As of the writing
of this report I have been updated by very few RVPs on this issue.
I will
be advising all locals at the Presidents Conference that they should
be dealing with the SCABS and the 25% from the Designates. To date only
Hamilton and Kingston have had their reports accepted by the NBOD and
a few others have had their meetings but I have yet to receive all reports
from the locals to take to the Board. It should be noted that for the
NBOD I need all information regarding the scabs: the charge, the letter
to the SCABS regarding the charge and inviting them to provide input,
any submissions made by the SCABS, the outline of the Investigation,
the minutes of the meeting showing the vote in two parts (accepting the
investigation report and then the recommendations) and finally the letter
to the SCABS advising of the local meeting results and that the recommendations
would be sent to me to take to the NBOD.
- We did follow up on the purchase of Blackberries from Bell Mobility.
Their plan and price was identical to that of Telus except that we would
get a 20% discount on the service because the PSAC deals with them. There
was also a point in time that the actual hardware (#6750 black and white)
was on promotion for no charge but that time has passed. As I said in
December, I was advised by some users that the colour monitors are easier
to see than the black and white ones. However, from the discussions in
December the following are some of the points raised:
- Not all council members needed or wanted the units.
- We should look at individual need and want for the units and
not necessarily order 13 of anything.
- We should put this purchase in the budget for convention.
- We should look at this purchase after convention.
- Blackberries are not to replace the laptops but are just
an additional tool for use like the cell phones.
- I would like to call an Executive Committee meeting after this
council meeting to look at a follow up questionnaire to the members,
Call Centre issues and I would also like their input on the staffing
of the IT Officer job. I will be asking the members of the committee
of their availability.
- A follow up IT audit will be conducted shortly. As you know
our priorities changed in January/February and we will be in a position
to have an audit conducted in the next couple of weeks. As scheduled,
four new laptops were purchased and have been or will be distributed
before the end of this meeting.
- I sent an e-mail to the CRA requesting where the Compensation
Call Site in Winnipeg will be housed and who they would report to and
followed up last week. I will provide you with the answer when I received
one.
- The names for ITPR representatives have been received and I
will be deciding on the number and whom we will train shortly.
Telus Mobility Costs
We were requested to look into the Telus Mobility costs, more specifically
as they apply to long distance calls.
Prior to October 2004, users were on either the “Talk Anywhere 100” plan
which, for a monthly fee of $100.00, provided 800 minutes (local or long
distance) or the “Talk Anywhere 150” plan which, for a monthly
fee of $150.00, provided users with 1250 minutes (local or long distance).
In both plans, any time over the limits cost $0.20 per minute, either it
be local or long distance. The “Talk Anywhere” plans were cancelled
in October 2004 and were replaced by the “Pool” and “Pool
Canada” plans
Presently, everybody is on the “Pool 100” plan. For $100.00
per month per user, this allows individual users 1000 free minutes of local
calls. This does not cover long distance calls. Every local minute over and
above the 1000 costs $0.20 and every long distance minute also costs $0.20.
The “Pool Canada” plans offered by Telus include long distance
calls however, the number of paid for minutes are reduced. For example, with
the “Pool Canada 100” plan (which is the highest corporate plan
offered by Telus), it would cost $100.00 per month per user and would include
up to 800 local and long distance free minutes per user. Every minute (local
or long distance) after 800 would cost $0.25 per minute.
This being said and even though the plans changed in October 2004, our usage
has also generally increased since that time. We still think that the “Pool
100” plan suits our purposes best.
In Solidarity,
Betty Bannon
National President, UTE
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