| OSA Newsline -- September 30, 2019
There was an excellent membership meeting last Thursday. Not only was it well attended, but also our Activist Classroom Training session received a visit from New York State Senator John Liu.
It was homecoming for Senator Liu, since OSA has supported him since he was a pro-labor member of the NY City Council and an anti-Tier 6 Comptroller for the City of New York. He commented that Governor Cuomo, who brought us that lousy retirement plan, had taken a dislike to Comptroller Liu when John opposed the change. Now, years later, Senator Liu says the Governor still holds it against him. That’s okay, we like him.
Our report to the membership on contract negotiations was brief. We are still waiting for the City to agree to the next date.
However, we did have one victory. Brand new members hired after July have been required to sign up for the HIP HMO health plan. Labor agreed to this experiment as a part of the health benefits negotiations and it sounded mostly harmless. New employees are generally young and healthy and, if after a year, they did not like HIP, they could drop out at the next re-opener.
It turned out to be not harmless when the HIP HMO program came up with an astonishing cost for the famly drug plan of about $650 a month. We did not even believe the numbers when we were first told. Okay, that will now be corrected by a special re-opener on November 1st. The new price going forward will drop to a still steep $225 a month, but it is a lot better.
If HIP HMO can not control costs better than that, we foresee very few members staying with them in the future.
Members interested in learning about pensions – or a wide variety of other topics – should note that we have a number of classes available this October. Check the summer mailing which is on this website as the OSA Newsletter for August 2019.
Curiously, the news last week of a delay from October to February in the Administrative Staff Analyst exam was first contradicted and then confirmed by DCAS. Apparently, it was a decision still in-progress.
We do not know the reason for the delay, but one possibility is that the Personnel branch of DCAS simply took on too much too quickly. If that is the reason, we can understand and look forward to a better exam after the delay.
Finally, the protest instructions for the recent Associate Staff Analyst exam have been handled very unevenly. Most candidates were told how to protest, but others were not. If you were not told, you can find the form to request a protest session on this page in the Special Newsline Update for September 24, 2019. Print it out, complete it and mail it in IMMEDIATELY to DCAS at the address on the form.
If you would like to listen to this newsline as an audio file, please click on this link:
Those who took the Associate Staff Analyst Exam last week should have received information at the exam about requesting to attend a protest review session for the exam. However, if you did not, DCAS informs us that the Protest Review Session for the exam will be held on October 29, 2019. Attendance at the Protest Review Session is by appointment. To get an appointment time, you must IMMEDIATELY complete and mail in the request form which you can find at the link below:
Request to Attend Protest Review Session
Read the form carefully and completely and be sure to make a copy of your request for your files.
The deadline for requesting attendance is the end of this week so get your request in NOW.
Finally, if you did not take the sheet that indicated how many you got right, you can find the same information on your individual account dashboard on DCAS' OASYS 2.0 site. You will need your username and password to log in.
Last week’s Associate Staff Analyst Exam was very difficult. There were only 80 questions, but the early reports from those coming out were very low grades.
Candidates should not lose hope over this, since all of these exams are competitive and the Personnel branch of DCAS has been known to scale tests upwards if an insufficient number of candidates passed an exam. Also, there will be the protest period and that, too, can sometimes change grades upward.
We want to thank the OSA staff and volunteers for getting up early enough to be at all the test sites. As a result, members could be wished well and our good luck gift could be handed out to each candidate.
There were two reports of defective calculators so, in the future, we will ask members to test them before entry. Two, out of thousands distributed, is a low rate of failure, but if you are the candidate who is relying on the defective machine, even one bad one is too much.
We were ready to do it all again in October, but DCAS has now delayed the Administrative Staff Analyst exam until February, 2020.
Meanwhile, on a very positive note, few members found fault with the testing sites, staff or accommodations. Our congratulations to the testing staff of DCAS on running a complex operation smoothly.
There is no news on negotiations. The City has agreed to meet us in October and we’ll have the date firmed up by this week’s general membership meeting. We don’t know why this is taking so long, but maybe we will learn at the meeting.
The general membership meeting is, of course, this Thursday at 6pm sharp. We will introduce a number of new activist delegates from among the MetroPlus Nurses.
We had planned on a guest speaker for the Activist Classroom Training that follows the membership meeting, but he has had to cancel. We are seeking a backup speaker, but that is also not confirmed as of yet. We plan on having a good meeting in any case.
See you at the meeting.
If you would like to listen to this newsline as an audio file, please click on this link:
In a show of support for the Organization of Staff Analysts, the MetroPlus Nurses voted by over 2 to 1 to choose our union to represent them.
With over 81% of the eligible voters casting ballots, OSA won over our somewhat larger opponent, DC 37. The official results can be downloaded at this link.
Thanks are due to our organizers and our legal team, but most of all thanks are due to the Nurses who put their trust in us.
It is now our job to validate their decision by doing the very best we can for them, as we try to do for all of our members.
The organizers are being given a one day holiday for this Wednesday and we will start our planning to help the newly won members on Thursday. We become their official representatives on the 13th.
That’s all the news for a happy Tuesday. We look forward to seeing you at the Labor Day Parade this Saturday.
If you would like to listen to this newsline as an audio file, please click on this link:
Contract negotiations, as expected, remain on hold due to City negotiating team vacations.
Our training classes for the summer conclude this week and our best wishes to those members preparing for the upcoming exams.
We expect some good news this month for a number of our Hospital IT workers related to the issue of standby. We also expect a positive result for a small number of our uniformed members related to pay that we had argued was due from the last contract. Details to follow.
Our collective bargaining election has gone to a vote. The MetroPlus Nurses are now voting to choose either DC 37 or OSA. Results will be available on this newsline by Tuesday evening.
Members should have received the summer mailing by now or, at the latest, this week. The contents are already posted on this website as the August 2019 OSA NEWSLETTER.
Please pay attention to the flyer for the upcoming Labor Day Parade, set for next Saturday, September 7th. We will gather at 11:30am on West 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues at the corner of Sixth. Hats, shirts, water and snacks to those who march. Lunch afterwards. Call John LaGuardia, Ken Kearns or Rob Spencer at the union office 212-686-1229 to let us know you are coming and who you are bringing with you. Let's remind our City of the power of the labor movement!
You can download the flyer to remind you of the details by clicking the following link:
Labor Day Parade Flyer
Check back on Tuesday evening for the election results.
If you would like to listen to this week's newsline as an audio file, please click on this link:
|