We hope your Memorial Day holiday is pleasant. Last week, Gloria Middleton, President of CWA Local 1180, hosted a meeting with OSA and DC37 to discuss the 1180 settlement of their EEO case.

The story started back in 1978 with wrongdoing by Ed Koch and picked up steam in 2009 with the inception of corrective action by 1180 and may now conclude in the summer of 2019. Basically, the minimum salaries paid to Administrative employees was the precipitating cause of the dispute.

The deliberately lowered minimum salaries of Administrative employees has affected our Administrative Analysts somewhat, but has hurt the title of Administrative Manager far more.

Their long awaited court settlement is still not final, but is expected to be approved and it does provide some remedy for many of their covered class of grievants.

This was important to OSA and DC37 because we are now seeking, and will probably seek in concert with CWA, an overall rationalization of the Administrative entry minimum salaries. There will be more details at this Thursday’s general membership meeting.

Remember, the meeting is at 220 East 23 Street, Suite 707, at 6pm sharp for the meeting, a break for food thereafter, and then the Activist Classroom Training session.

If you'd like to listen to this newsline update as an audio file, click on this link:

AUDIO May 27, 2019

We actually had a second good week in dealing with the City on technical matters relating to our contract. Now, that report sounds too vague, but we can give a detail that may make it more clear.

We have already made it clear to the City that we wish to exit the contract period even with DC37 in terms of Welfare Fund contractual payments. The City was agreeable and cited a price for us doing so. The price, however, was based on receipt of the increased contribution in a particular month. Since OSA is not in desperate straits to increase that rate immediately, we asked the City how much we could save by delaying the rate increase for one or more months. At the same time, we asked how much that saving would translate into an increase in longevity payments.

Admittedly, these are all technical details, but the City is being very quick on their turnaround responses and, for once, we will not fault them. We will try to beat down our guarded optimism over the speeding up of negotiations, but only because we have learned to avoid raising expectations. Too often in the past, things seemed to be going well and then they weren’t. Still, this week went well.

The May membership mailing is going out and should be received by you this week. If not, next Tuesday, call George at the union office and he will check your address and send you a copy. The mailing will also be on this website soon.

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AUDIO May 20, 2019

There was a technical meeting on our contract negotiations last week. It went well.

As Analysts, we are always fascinated to learn the details behind the City’s calculations related to how much they have available to fund our contract and any little extras that we might be seeking.

We did get a lot of information about the one percent book that is the basis for these calculations and about the assumptions built in to those numbers.

Those of our members who work with contracts and do jobs where math is required are aware that the City is unlikely to ever get the arithmetic wrong, since two plus two is always four and is easily checked. However, the assumptions can be fair guesses or somewhat tilted toward the City or wildly unrealistic.

Thus, if we do not ask about and do not understand the assumptions, we could end up overpaying for longevity or health benefits or any other contractual gains.

The union was so pleased with the clarity and thoroughness of the presentation over the course of a two hour session that we actually complimented the other side.

That said, what we learned spurred us to ask follow-up questions on the same topic. We asked, hopefully, if we could get the answers by today, but we easily accepted that the City would need until this Thursday to be able to obtain the extra data.

So, we will be meeting again this Thursday.

We also have some good news on bringing the right to collective bargaining to more professional workers.

As of yesterday, the Organization of Staff Analysts represents the Health and Hospitals Corporation’s employees in the titles of Clinical Documentation Specialist Levels I and II.

These highly-credentialed workers hold jobs that, in City employ, would fit in well with our Analyst series and have been added to our unit by the Office of Collective Bargaining.

We welcome our news brothers and sisters and we look forward to meeting at least some of them in person at this month’s General Membership Meeting, which is set for Thursday evening, May 30th.

If you'd like to listen to this newsline update as an audio file, click on this link:

AUDIO May 13, 2019