Today, there will be a memorial service between 2:30 and 4pm at the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The service is on behalf of Judy Friedman. Judy was, for many years, our Chapter Chairperson at DOHMH and she will be greatly missed. It will be held at the Queens location.

Our membership meeting will be held, as normal, at the union office at 220 East 23rd Street, Suite 707. Food arrives at 6pm and the meeting starts at 6:15pm. Meetings typically last less than two hours and this month we have a unique guest speaker.

Darol Tucker is an Internal Revenue Service local Taxpayer Advocate. It’s his job to help us against the IRS bureaucracy. Wow. At the meeting, he will talk about his office and how he can, in some circumstances, help individual members.

Dan Parsons, a friend of OSA’s is a member of the National Taxpayer Advocacy Panel and he arranged for Darol to come visit with+ our members.

The union office is closed Monday in honor of Martin Luther King Day.

OSA was a part of the labor unions supporting the Professional Staff Congress at their rally outside the governor’s office last week. We can’t say our efforts were very effective, because Andrew Cuomo then went out and cut the CUNY budget savagely.

We know Andrew does not like Mayor Bill but, seriously, taking funds away from our City University is not the right step.

No other news this week, but a mailing has gone out and should be received by you this week. If you do not get it, call George at the union office and he will check your address and send you a copy.

Our members at the Transit Authority have voted to accept the proposed union contract. The vote was unanimous. The Transit Authority contract must be approved by the board of the MTA, but this is a formality.

Our newly unionized members at NYC Health and Hospitals are still being asked to work overtime for free. Some members have reported that HR personal are telling them that they will not be fully union until the Welfare Fund is changed over.

This is nonsense.

The conversion from Management Benefits Fund to OSA Welfare Fund is likely to occur in February, but full union status was achieved on November 17, 2015. The Office of Collective Bargaining certified the union’s right to represent on that date.

If you are told to work overtime for nothing, first remind your supervisor that you are now union covered staff. If they continue to insist, cooperate but call the union and we will file a grievance for you.

Our brothers and sisters in Traffic Enforcement and School Safety voted unanimously to approve their 2008-17 agreement. Of 53 eligible voters, 43 returned ballots, all 43 voting to approve the new contract. The NYPD and the City have been informed of the result and we look forward to hearing soon as to which payrolls will reflect the raises and retroactive monies.

Happy New Year!

Transit Authority members voted on their proposed contract last week and, when the votes were tallied, the results were unanimously in favor of acceptance. A good start for the new year.

Our brothers and sisters in Traffic Enforcement and School Safety are currently voting and ballots will be counted Tuesday at the close of business. Votes have been overwhelmingly positive in the units voting so far.

Finally, Mayor De Blasio announced on radio that the City will now allow six weeks of paid parental leave for unrepresented or managerial employees. That would have been a nicer holiday gift if he had also not stated that the parental leave would be paid for by cancellation of about a ½% raise due those employees next year, plus the loss of two vacation days for senior employees.

No details are yet published to clarify if parental leave can be taken at any point in a child’s upbringing, or if a leave will be available for each child in the family.

It also seems a trifle unfair to take two vacation days away from a long service employee over sixty years of age especially since we do not know if parental leave can be claimed for grandchildren as well as for children.

Details will be clarified, eventually, but we do wish the Mayor had talked to the Managerial Employees Association and the unions before the announcement.

Still, this does start 2016 off on an interesting note.