OCB has ruled that Supervising Systems Analysts will be allowed to vote on joining the union. Good, we have sought that right for members of that title series since 1978. Persistence pays.
Members should already be aware of our March membership meeting, this Thursday at 6:00 PM. The location is room 709 at the union office, 220 E. 23rd St., between 2nd and 3rd Avenues.
OSA Newsline – March 20, 2000
A mailing is already out for this month and will posted on this website shortly under News From OSA for March, 2000. If you do not receive a copy in the mail, please call Yvonne at (212) 686-1229 and let us know so we can send another copy and update our records.
Our multi-year long efforts to obtain union representation for all Analysts is marking a new milestone.
The Office of Collective Bargaining will be ruling shortly on the Supervising Systems Analysts of the Health and Hospitals Corporation.
A few of us were involved in seeking to obtain collective bargaining for HHC Systems Analysts as far back as 1978, but that case was put in limbo in 1979 awaiting the results of the Staff Analyst case. It was a long wait.
OSA renewed the fight for Systems Analysts in 1992 and obtained union status for most of them by 1994. OCB will now be ruling on the final group of a 22-year-old campaign. It could be said we did keep the faith.
OSA Newsline – March 13, 2000
A survey was sent out last week on the topic of post-retirement benefit obligations. OSA’s Welfare Fund, which does not like to waste members’ money, is resisting hiring an actuary to provide an estimate of the Fund’s post-retirement benefit obligations.
The truth is, there is no point in estimating obligations if there are no funds to fulfill those obligations and city union welfare funds seldom have more than a year’s reserve. Nonetheless, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants have demanded that all audits include such estimates.
Tom Gerraghty of our office has been in contact with a number of other affected unions and he authored the current survey. We are looking to put together some concerted action, either to jointly retain a single low-cost actuary if we must, or better still, to resist this unjustified expenditure of members’ welfare fund monies. More later as the returns arrive.
OSA Newsline – March 6, 2000
Last week was quiet except for work on negotiations. There was a Municipal Bargaining Committee subcommittee on negotiations meeting. At it were presentations by labor consultants urging various courses of action for us to follow. One presentation, that made by Ray Rogers of Corporate Campaign, Inc., was positively spell-binding. Even so, the leadership of OSA reserved judgment on the tactics being urged and will discuss the matter more fully at the March membership meeting.
Reports were made by those union leaders who are actually at the bargaining table already, but those reports made it clear that there is no progress at all so far. The Mayor continues to use the huge city surplus to cut taxes and to tell us that our raises must come from some magical never-ending series of improvements in our productivity. The Mayor is posturing at present, not bargaining at all.
