| OSA Newsline -- January 25, 2021
No word yet from the City on a date for resumed negotiations. Also, of course, a bit of a slowdown on the vaccinations, since the doses ran out.
The only bit of interesting news was an article circulated to some City union activists. The article takes on the City health benefits from a familiar angle.
We are informed that our benefits are old fashioned and could easily be improved by wise changes that can and should be made. We are urged to seek out mayoral candidates open to changing our current benefits. For example, we are told that the employees should be paying premiums for basic health coverage and, in return, our deductibles may be lowered.
Currently, the GHI CBP and the basic HIP plan carry no monthly premium and this is old fashioned, dating back to Fiorello LaGuardia. It may be old fashioned, but we like a zero premium option and we would like to continue to retain it in place.
So then, our friends on Wall Street are again looking to make our health care costs an issue in the upcoming mayoral election. And so, of course, will we.
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Today, we celebrate Martin Luther King Day.
The inauguration is set for this week and Joe Biden has outlined plans for economic aid that, if passed, may be of great help to our cities and states. That promise, plus the ongoing rollout of the COVID vaccination gives us hope for a contract.
We were willing to settle as far back as May of 2019, but the City delayed until March of 2020, when COVID effectively shut bargaining down. We could not argue with either the plague nor the economic dislocation it caused, but now we feel it is time to resume bargaining and, hopefully, conclude these overdue negotiations.
We sent a letter last week demanding a return to bargaining. We will hope to hear back from the City this week or next about a date for resumption of bargaining.
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The national news was again distracting last week. On the downside, the invasion of the Capitol building was alarming to the nation and scary to many. The upside of that scene was the near universal reaction against it by all sides.
Almost lost in that day's excitement was the winning of control of the Senate by the Democratic party. The immediate reason why that matters at present is New York City's need for a lot of financial help due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our city was facing serious layoffs without such aid and, now, maybe, perhaps not.
Locally, we did get some good news from the City.
Personnel Services Bulletin #600-4 lays out the rules for time off to get the Covid-19 vaccine. Members are allowed, once the vaccine is available, to take off two hours from work to get the shot. There will be no charge to leave for the time off the job, although members should notify their supervisors in advance and obtain documentation from the provider as to the time and date the shot was administered.
Only a small number of our members are now being offered the vaccine, but this will increase in the weeks to come. The two hours off will apply for each of the two recommended shots.
Moreover, the City is so anxious to encourage us to get the vaccine that the PSB specifies that once a member has submitted proof of both shots being taken, the member is to receive three hours of compensatory time credit as a reward. If a member gets the shots outside of work hours, there would be no need for time off, but the City will still grant the three hours of comp time, once documentation of the shots is provided.
OSA does represent a small number of workers currently being offered the vaccine, but that number is expected to grow quickly. Also a number of our members have volunteered for a temporary change of work assignment to assist in the giving of these shots.
This is all good. The sooner we can put COVID-19 behind us, the sooner we can try to get back our regular lives.
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There was not much local news over the past three weeks but, eventually, there was some national news.
Patricia Lynch, our Transit Authority volunteer representative, was able to give us the good news that the Transit aid being sought was obtained in sufficient amount to end the talk of layoffs at this time. It would have been unfair beyond all belief if our transport workers, after braving the pandemic to keep our City running, were then to face layoffs because Washington could not get its act together.
We also did get a Covid relief bill and that is fine, but it does not immediately help our State or City's needs that come from the pandemic.
Locally, it is now our turn and many of our members are volunteering to help staff Covid-19 vaccine distribution centers. Obviously, the rules we followed last March continue to make sense. If you have an immune compromised family member at home, caution is advised. If not, we are all eager for this plague to be halted by the vaccine and we will help if we can.
We are also now hoping that the State legislature can get around to dealing with an early retirement package.
Finally, our union will be asking the Office of Labor Relations about when will they deal with our overdue contract.
Last year was a really bad year. Let us hope that this new year will be better.
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