| OSA Newsline -- July 27, 2020
It was a quiet week last week. Agencies are carefully and, often, prudently moving towards asking more workers to return to the office.
The New York City Employees Retirement System has sought volunteers for the start to return. They are requesting that DCAS authorize a 7AM to 7PM flex schedule for their workers who return. This sort of schedule would certainly help reduce crowding on public transit and in City offices as well.
We strongly endorse their request.
On a sad note, Joseph Guagliardo, former Supervisory Chair of the Municipal Credit Union, was sentenced to a bit over two years in jail for his part in the recent credit union scandal.
Many OSA members of the MCU turned out a dozen years ago to vote Mr. Guagliardo out of office and he was defeated at the time. One of his friends then resigned his own spot on the Supervisory Committee so that Joe could be appointed to fill his vacancy.
It would have been better for Joe and for the Municipal Credit Union if he had accepted the results of that election.
The MCU is now in receivership and we do not know when it will return to member control.
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Even though our contract negotiations were halted by the pandemic, we continue to be in regular contact with the Office of Labor Relations on matters affecting our members. Also, we need to inform them to add to our contract any new titles that we come to represent.
On our latest phone call, we learned that OLR is tentatively hoping to return to its regular offices right after Labor Day. That would be a good sign, except that none of us actually know now that this would make any sense in September.
Meanwhile, the work does go on and we have a bit of good news to report. We have been working with CWA Local 1180 in a joint campaign to gain representation for Assistant and Associate Directors of Hospitals. The campaign started in 2010 and it took a full ten years to get a decision. We won.
Henceforward, OSA will represent the Associates and CWA Local 1180 will represent the Assistant Directors of Hospitals. It is a big victory for the workers who have waited for many, many years. We are pleased of course, but we have to wonder why it takes that long.
On a less cheerful note, Ken Wynder, the President of LEEBA, the Law Enforcement Employees Benevolent Association, has been indicted by the federal government. He and the union's Treasurer are accused of stealing money from the members' annuity funds. Prior to this, two years ago, the City ceased giving LEEBA the contractual contributions for their Welfare Fund due to LEEBA's failure to file required fiscal reporting documents.
LEEBA as a union came into existence by raiding existing unions. Their first victory was in 2002 over SEIU Local 300, the old Civil Service Forum. LEEBA's future leader promised the Department of Environmental Protection police that he would work wonders for them and they believed him. Then, over the next 18 years, LEEBA continued to expand by further raids on the Teamsters, DC37 and CWA. among others.
Our turn came in 2016 when, seizing on how long it took for our contract to get completed, LEEBA challenged OSA for the right to represent our School Safety and Traffic Enforcement members. Our members were apparently far too sharp to be fooled by Mr. Wynder and his promises. He was defeated by a crushing vote of 50-1. We wish we could say we were surprised by Mr. Wynder's current indictment, but we are not. Indeed, we expected it and wondered why it took so long.
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The City is trying to figure out how to reopen safely, but this is quite difficult. One way to increase social distancing is to adopt our union's emphasis on Alternate Work Schedules. The leaders of the Campaign Finance Board have sent us a request for our involvement in their reopening plan. That was a welcome request and we do have a lot of experience on this topic.
Alise Moise and Sharon Jack of our office will be responding to the request and we are anxious to be of as much help as possible. The virus will clearly be a threat for months to come. The fact that work from home is often being done successfully is good. However, at some point many more of us will be asked to ride the subway to work. At that time, every additional bit of alternate work scheduling will certainly help.
We had two nice decisions last week. The Deputy Assistant Directors at the Civilian Complaint Review Board are now eligible to belong to our union and will be covered for grievance rights and overtime compensation.
Also, our most recent higher court decision confirms our union's right to represent Directors of Planning at the Health and Hospitals Corporation.
The Hospitals Corporation has a long history of denying that they are subject to the City or State labor laws. Thus, they create new titles and call them managerial simply to deny these new workers any of the rights accorded to union covered employees.
To counter this, our union spends a lot of time and effort to prove that the new jobs are not, in fact, managerial at all. Then, once we win. HHC goes off to court to say the Office of Collective Bargaining cannot tell the Hospitals what to do. We win all those cases, but it wastes time, money and effort. The costs are always borne by us, either as duespayers for the union, or as taxpayers supporting the Hospitals.
Now, after a loss before the Office of Collective Bargaining and another in court, and one more yet on appeal, the HHC's effort to go one more court higher yet has been denied.
We win. A few more workers have the rights and protections they should have had all along.
Better yet, however, will be when HHC stops wasting taxpayer money on anti-labor law firms'f frivolous cases. We always win those cases.
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