| OSA Newsline -- July 29, 2019
The big news this week is Paid Family Leave. Quite a few years ago, Mayor De Blasio started the ball rolling by giving six weeks of paid parental leave to all managers.
He was being in no way generous, since he also paid for it by cancelling a ˝ percent raise due to managers and also taking away two annual vacation days from senior staff.
This, however, spurred the UFT into action and, by last year, they had arranged to delay their next contract in return for enough recurring monies to provide six weeks of Paid Parental Leave for their members.
DC37 went a different route, choosing instead to opt in to the Paid Family Leave program offered by New York State.
Although OSA received contract demands for both Parental Leave and Paid Family Leave, we chose to focus on the DC37 model, since we largely share their demography. We are as likely to be caring for aged parents as for newborn children.
The City took forever to implement the Paid Family Leave, but the deductions have now hit our paychecks.
Members called in outraged that they were now paying for a benefit they did not want. Other members called in outraged that neither the union nor the City had put out the details so they could apply for Paid Family Leave immediately.
Only one member called in who was angry both because she was paying and angry because she did not have the details of how to apply for the benefit.
You can download a flyer from the State, giving some details here:
There is also a state website at paidfamilyleave.ny.gov and you can Call the Paid Family Leave Helpline at (844) 337-6303 Monday - Friday 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM EST.
Actually, we are very sure that this will become a wildly popular program. It does not pay all that much, but it does pay something and the amounts will be going up in years to come.
Our concern is that as the program is ever more used, the biweekly premium may well rise sharply.
Still, our country is well behind the folks in Western Europe in providing relief from work, so perhaps this is just overdue.
The most irritating aspect of the PFL deduction for our union is that the City had the resources to take our money, but not to complete negotiations on our contract.
Please check back in two weeks.
If you would like to listen to this week's newsline as an audio file, please click on this link:
Training classes are going on each evening at the union office for the upcoming Analyst exams, but now we have a new exam to consider.
Some members may wish to apply for the Health Services Manager Exam. The filing period is from July 3rd up to midnight on July 23rd.
Go to the DCAS exam application website or Google DCAS exams and click on the link provided.Please note that DCAS's exam application site supports Google Chrome, Internet Explorer (version 10 & 11 only), or Safari. Firefox is not a supported browser.
Select Exam #0104 Health Services Manager and click to apply for the exam. This will get you your log-in for DCAS’s OASys system. Login to the system, pay the $68 filing fee and proceed with the application.
Need help or advice? Call Krystal or George at our union office, (212) 686-1229.
The exam is an Education and Experience only exam, so check out the Notice of Examination before applying.
We received bad news last week. Our union had challenged the City on their interpretation on how to handle existing longevity awards when a member was being promoted from Associate Staff Analyst to Administrative Staff Analyst. There was actually a great deal of money at stake and, had we won our case with a favorable ruling, it would have affected other titles thereafter.
The arbitrator ruled against us early last week, which was greatly disappointing. Our legal team has studied and will be studying the ruling and the union plans to add outside consultants as well to see what will be our next step.
When you go to arbitration on a complex legal matter, you can never be sure of the outcome. In this case, the loss does not hurt us further in that we had been seeking to improve matters, not trying to avoid a potential threat. So things are no worse than before, but we had been hoping for better.
We were pleased with the work of our legal team and it is a good idea for any union to take on a fight that could result in a decision in our favor. We did as we should and we lost for now, but we will see about the next step.
As expected, there was no response offered by the City on our negotiations.
Check back in two weeks.
If you would like to listen to this week's newsline as an audio file, please click on this link:
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