The big news this week is Thursday’s general membership meeting. At the meeting, we will discuss the upcoming negotiations and also the compressed work week pilot project set to be offered to 417 of our members at HRA.

Please do not call to ask the union office for those details. Come to the meeting or, if you cannot, talk to another member who can attend. Otherwise, those details will be included in our next mailing.

The meeting will start at 6pm and will go to 7pm, at which time we will break for food. At 7:15pm, those members attending the Activist Classroom Training session will reconvene. We are hoping the training will be over by 8pm or thereabouts. We did meet that strict timetable at last May’s meeting.

If you are enrolled in the ACT, please make every effort to attend.

We've just posted a slideshow of photos from this year's Labor Day Parade under the September 2017 tab in the OSA Photo Gallery section of the website.. If you were there, thanks. If not, hope to see you next year.

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

AUDIO September 25, 2017

A pilot project is being initiated at the Department of Social Services branch of HRA. The project is called the Compressed Workweek Pilot. It envisions offering employees the opportunity to work nine days in each biweekly period.

The pilot stems from a provision in our recent union contract. We were seeking the use, on a voluntary basis, of a compressed work week schedule and our preference was for the four day work week.

Even so, we welcome the offer of a trial of a nine day, biweekly, schedule. We believe the agency, once it is convinced that the sky does not fall in over a nine day schedule will be omore open to an 8 day schedule.

The City is proceeding cautiously and only seven sections will be involved with a bit over 400 OSA members being given the option to work a compressed week.

The agency’s timeline for starting the project listed October for the Labor-Management discussions, but those are now completed ahead of schedule, as of last Friday.

The agency had planned to start the pilot on January 1st, but we will urge that it go a bit more quickly.

Details on the pilot project will be available at a lunch time meeting set for this week at HRA and at next week’s membership meeting.

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

AUDIO September 18, 2017

Earthquakes in Mexico, hurricanes one after another in Texas and Florida and all of the news for the east coast and the south coast was terrible last week, with one exception.

For whatever reason, the weather was lovely for our annual Labor Day Parade.

The date 9/11 has affected us all over the years and it seems like it is one bad thing after another.

And then... on a lovely day, not too hot, not too cold, with thousands marching in front of us and thousands marching after us, scores of our brothers and sisters put on their OSA t-shirts and marched arm-in-arm up Fifth Avenue. It was really a lovely day.

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

AUDIO September 11, 2017

The news this week is this coming Saturday’s Labor Day Parade. Our union is lucky this year and we will march early. We will gather at 9:45am on East 45th Street between Fifth Avenue and Vanderbilt Avenue, nearer to Vanderbilt Avenue.

If your public transportation lands you at Grand Central just exit the west side of the Great Hall or take the escalator up and exit from the Met Life Building onto Vanderbilt Avenue.

Hats, t-shirts and snacks are provided. The walk is of reasonable length and, after the march, we gather together for a union brunch.

All members, former members and retirees are welcome. It’s a special day and we hope you can make it.

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

AUDIO September 4, 2017