For many of you today may represent a happily anticipated return to normalcy, while for others this may be a period of anxiety as you may not feel completely safe or comfortable returning to the office. Regardless of which side of this gradient you identify with, we are here for you. Please remember to be respectful of all our co-workers and empathetic to one another during this period of transitions.
For those of you waiting on our pending telework grievance, we want to provide an update. As mentioned on our last statewide call, we disagreed with the agency’s denial of our previous telework grievances that suggested the agency was unfairly limiting many telework contracts using conditions outside the contract and DAS policy definitions of telework suitability. A few days after receiving the denial, we appealed the decision to DAS. This week we hope to meet with John Nees, who represents management at the DAS level. Telework cases cannot go to arbitration, so his decisions will be final. Given the finality of this decision, we would like to reach out one last time and remind people that it is not too late to supply us with supporting documentation to bolster our case. If you have received an arbitrary denial – just send it to odfwunionsteward@gmail.com, or reply here, letting us know if you’d like the correspondence redacted, or if you would like to be named as a listed grievant. Even if you do not want to participate in the grievance yourself, we encourage you to share this information to benefit your co-workers. Emails with your supervisor, or a summary of verbal conversations, associated with the agency limiting your telework without a reason tied to your work duties, are also helpful. Remember, all correspondence will remain confidential unless you explicitly state you would like to be a named grievant.
If you have questions or concerns on this, or any other issue, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Solidarity,
SEIU 503 ODFW Sub-local 109 Leadership
https://local109.seiu503.org/leadership/
To learn more details what your union is working on, join the conference call on the second Tuesday each month from noon-1pm (watch for email with login instructions a day or two before). Next call will be Tuesday, May, 10. Our union is member-lead, member-run, and member-worked. This means that you are the union.
