Not Using Self Check at Safeway is a Political Act.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

We are all busy. Life is stressful. But we can resist in so many small ways. Don't use self checkout, you can't be in that much of a hurry. And talk to other folks in line. 

Remind them that you don't work here. Remind them that the jobs here are union jobs with benefits, important in the US with no health care and poor public services. Tell them that if we all do this there will be no jobs left for our children and grandchildren. 

And most of us are just working folk, we won't be pop stars, (most musicians won't be either, they'll make good music) basketball stars, or move about in the company of the Bill Gates, Onan Musk's and Mark Zuckerberg's of this world. We should carry our identity as workers proudly as society functions because of us.

Fight back against their war in the workplace and their ideological war aiming to convince us, against our best instincts, that the free market is efficient and works for all of us. Fight back any way you can.

 

When we take these small steps, in other words, not passively go about our daily lives as if we have no power, it changes our immediate environment. It creates discussion. Even if we accomplish very little in the short term, in the long term we make headway. We talk to one another, we question technology, the technology that in the long run makes us redundant and those that it does not make redundant it increases their pace of work and the rate of exploitation. 

We inevitably think about the real problem and that it is not technology but the class that owns it. 

Most of us are not happy with the way things are. But we are isolated, distracted by the mass media, the obsession with sports, sex, religion and so on. I should add, I like the first two, but obsession with anything is not healthy. 

The media is owned by the same group of people that own the supermarkets and big stores, the airlines, the building of homes that, in essence is human shelter. They own the means of producing our food and they own the water needed to produce it. Yet they are not in the business of food production. Marx explained it so well:

“A schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation.” 

This class of people spends billions of dollars trying to convince us that our basic instincts about the world are wrong. It is this that makes us sick, depressed. Fighting back changes this as confronting the school bully does, even if he wins on that day he will find a different victim. Rejecting the narrative has the same effect.

 

I'll share these statistics below once more. They are from rom a year or two ago. We are not what the billionaire's media says we are. We know what we want but do not know how we can get it or that we can get it at all. That is a huge dam that will be breached at some point, the idea that we can't change things. We will see some huge battles ahead I am convinced of it.

 

Sixty-three percent of U.S. adults currently agree with the statement that the Republican and Democratic parties do “such a poor job” of representing the American people that “a third major party is needed.”  Gallup

 

According to a Gallup survey…… 62 percent of Americans now say that the federal government should ensure that all Americans have health coverage, Dec 2024

 

 Nearly four times as many voters

support increasing public transportation funding as support reducing it. 

70 percent of respondents agree that “providing people with more transportation options is better for our health, safety, and economy than building more highways.” 

 

We know what we need.

Organised Labor Can Stop the Gaza Genocide and the War At Home

US tax dollars at work. Everyone in Gaza is a Hamas Terrorist the Zionists say.

Richard Mellor

I was just looking around the different national unions on the Internet to see what the trade union leadership (as they are responsible for union practices and policies) has to say about the horrific genocide that the Zionist regime in Israel is continuing against the Palestinian people, particularly in Gaza

As to be expected, the results were dismal. The image from the AFL-CIO website says it all; call your representative. This is one reason for the rise of Trump, the complete failure of the trade union leadership to mobilize our own power in our own defense and instead rely on getting a Democrat in to office. It’s been a catastrophe. 

Militant stuff indeed from The AFL-CIO

The AFL-CIO page said nothing about the holocaust in Gaza but did have a militant response to the Trump Administration’s canceling of union contracts for 450,000 workers. I have it from the horses’ mouth but I think the reader should be seated for this, “We got organized and helped introduce a bipartisan bill in Congress to overturn this executive order” The AFL-CIO leadership urges union members to call their Senators and tell them to vote for bill.

Need I say more. This pathetic response to Trump’s violence is to call your Senator as if we are not aware of the rot that permeates this bourgeois institution.

But in the course of looking for something I came across the resolution passed by the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) at their conference on August 26^th. 

The UE report states:

Today, delegates to the 79th UE Convention unanimously endorsed a resolution, “End the Genocide in Palestine,” which demands that the U.S. government immediately cease all military aid to Israel, and instead pressure Israel to end its genocide against the Palestinian people.

Here are the resolves from the resolution

End the Genocide in Palestine

Therefore, Be It Resolved that this 79^th UE Convention:

1.    Demands that the U.S. government immediately cease all military aid to Israel, and instead pressure Israel to:

a.    End their apartheid policies, and the genocide, occupation, and destruction in Gaza, as well as the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and;

b.    Negotiate a peace agreement on the basis of equality, democracy, and human rights for the Palestinian and Israeli people, including Palestinian self-determination and the right of return for refugees;

2.    Endorses the BDS movement and urges the union at all levels to become engaged in BDS and the movement for peace, justice and equality for Palestinians by:

3.    Creating forums for locals that have undertaken campaigns for divestment to lead workshops for member-to-member education so that other locals may learn from them;

4.    Creating and distributing educational materials about BDS;

5.    Identifying areas of investment not in compliance with BDS;

6.    Opposes all anti-BDS legislation, and opposes all efforts to outlaw BDS, existing BDS legislation, and otherwise punish critics of Israeli policies;

7.    Condemns the use of accusations of “antisemitism” to silence critics of Israel, and the use of such charges to suspend, fire, detain or deport people whose only “crime” is speech or protest.

You can read the full resolution here.

 

If you are in union you can take this resolution to your membership meeting and move it. Ensure you get a second as passing it is almost secondary because if it's  seconded you can speak on it and introduce the reasons why it is in workers’ interests to support it. You can use it to raise consciousness and educate your brothers and sisters on the issue.

For my former co-workers active in the union do this please. If you need help using this resolution or writing one of your own contact me and we can work on it. It’s important to do this on all issues we are facing as workers today.

AFSCME DC 33 Strike Over. Have the members seen the Tentative Agreement?

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED

8-12-25

 

A quick comment on the Afscme strike in Philadalphia.

 

The strike by 9000 members of Afscme District Council 33 in Philadelphia ended last Wednesday after union leaders accepted the city’s last offer. The union represents numerous public sector workers including 911 dispatchers, sanitation workers and medical examiners. But it is the sanitation workers, garbage collectors and their crucial role that brought the full weight of the courts down on the strikers.

On the first day of the strike the city with a Democratic mayor had a judge order 911 dispatchers back to work to, “avoid delays in emergency response times and public health”, that back to work order also applied to water department workers. Another city injunction, “…prohibited DC33 picketers from blocking or obstructing access to municipal buildings”. Another court order prevented striking sanitation workers from “gathering in groups of more than eight, or standing within 10 feet of city property (which includes sanitation centers), or engaging in behavior deemed as intimidating or harassing.” This like the 1880’s folks.

Old Biden set a great precedent here with the rail workers didn’t he folks. The bosses use all the institutions at their disposal to crush strikes and the workers movement.  We need to take note of that.

What use is a strike that doesn’t stop production or the daily activity of business? But we’re used to these types of work stoppages organized by the moribund, class collaborators that are in control of our unions. Strikes today are simply 24-hour protests which get a little old after you’ve been out there for any length of time watching people cross your picket lines. The union hierarchy is very generous with coffee and donuts. Then when we are being effective and actually accomplish what strikes are supposed to accomplish, halt production, out come the injunctions followed by the batons.

One has to shake one’s head, or in modern lingo SMH, when representatives of the bosses’ institutions, their political parties or their media get their judicial system to intervene to smash a strike out of concern for the health and safety of the population as a whole; our access to medical care or water for example. In the US hundreds of thousands of people, workers and the poor, die through the lack of any decent health care system; the US has the worst health care system and the most expensive of all the industrialized countries. Do a little research and see how many “Americans’ in the Navajo nation have no water or electricity, never mind jobs.

I don’t know how many times I lied to my supervisor (and some of them knew I was lying and were OK with it) when I was sent to shut off water to a single mother with children who couldn’t pay the bill. The powers that be learned that promoting people in to management positions that came out of the trenches was not a good strategy.

The members of DC 33 went back to work immediately but still, as of this writing, have to vote on the contract which will take place next week. Many workers are unhappy with the tentative agreement that includes a 3% wage increase a year for three years. The union had demanded 8% a year over three years then, in the face of management’s intransigence retreated to 5% a year. According to the Philadelphia Enquirer, Members of DC 33 earn an average annual salary of $46,000, $2000 below the city’s “living wage”

The strike had considerable support among the public despite the inconvenience.
“Sanitation workers are providing ‘public infrastructure necessities’ and should get more than the “bare minimum,”, South Philly resident Ronald Jones told  BillyPenn, a local Philadelphia news outlet. Others agreed:

“I think a temporary in convenience for most of us worth it for those who deserve to be paid because they're not being paid enough to do a job that's a dirty job that nobody wants to do.” Says one of the residents in the video above.

“I know what it is to work and then your money can’t [be sufficient for] you to live,” another woman says, “So if they have to do what they have to do, then they have to do what they have to do. Like they have to come up with a solution. The city has the money, give them the money.”

The president of District Council 33, Greg Boulware is also unhappy with the contract and that the management threatened to take more after he made a concession on wages. He blamed the management for using the courts to break the strike as “bad faith”. One would think he might launch a ferocious attack on them but the further up the union hierarchy management ladder you go, the more they push the negotiations process as a gentleman’s exercise in problem solving and after all, we are on the same team as the boss. There is no such thing as good faith when it comes to this class conflict over the wages and working conditions of working people.

One might wonder why on earth the union leadership would end a strike and the workers return to work when the members have not yet seen the tentative agreement the leadership has accepted and had the chance to vote on it.

Here’s why that is the scenario. Even though the DC33 president suggests that if the members vote the tentative agreement down they might go back out on strike, it is highly unlikely and the president knows it. It’s hard to get that momentum back and union officials use this tactic all the time in order to get workers back on the job. Even so, on what basis will they go back out? What is in it for them? The leadership completely folded in the face of the bosses’ aggression so there’s likely little confidence that if they sacrifice more time, money and material well being they’ll get anything better. I won’t say it can’t happen but it’s unlikely. 

Why would the DC33 president be surprised that the boss went to the courts to render the work stoppage ineffective as a response to a very reasonable wage demand from the union? Does he not know what Biden did to the rail workers?

The leadership of DC 33 simply capitulated. They have no answer to this aggression and the boss knows it; they likely gave money to the mayor who is a Democrat. The employers throughout the nation do not fear the trade union leadership. They have learned over the past decades since the 1980’s when there was an attempt by some sectors of organized labor to counter the capitalist offensive under Carter and then Reagan, that our leaders will not fight to win.

There are some 666,000 union members in Pennsylvania according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I have been a retired Afscme member for 20 years but I think DC33 was the second largest District Council in the country. But what is the point of all this structure, if the potential power of this organized sector of workers is not mobilized against the employers? The Afscme, and the entire leadership of organized labor refuse to mobilize this power except when it’s time to get their friends in the Democratic Party in to office. 

Individual locals even major unions cannot beat the employers in isolation. They argue that the laws are against us, that if they do this or do that the courts will respond and take our treasuries or threaten jail time. Well unions were illegal and we had to violate anti-union laws to get them. Trump doesn’t care about the damn law. The railroad workers had every right to strike back in 2024 so Biden went to the legislature with Pelosi and got the US Congress to pass the paw to make their legal strike illegal overnight. No problem “reaching across the aisle” that day.

There was considerable tension between some of the strikers and the cops after the injunction to ban more than 8 people gathering within 10 feet of a site. After the injunction the police told picketers not to stop that resulted in some back and forth. From WHYY.org

“Then, a law enforcement officer with a sheriff’s badge handed out the court order and read it out loud to an increasingly rowdy crowd, who started shouting back, questioning their authority and sometimes swearing loudly.

“I understand your position, but we can’t let nobody in or out,” said one man who appeared to be a union striker but refused to identify himself.

As a crowd grew, then shrank before retreating across the street, phones were pulled out to record the situation.

“The cops get overtime,” somebody in the crowd shouted.

“We got families, we got kids. What the f—-?” said another person. “We’re not moving. Come on, let’s get serious.”

It’s the same old story and one of the reasons, despite the positive views on unions, that so many members are angry at the refusal of their leaders to go on the offensive. Workers end up on picket lines for weeks with very little to show for it.  The major cause for this capitulation in the face of the employer’s war against workers is their view that workers and bosses have the same interests, are on the same team. This is embodied in the Team Concept through management labor partnerships, interest based bargaining, quality circles and various other labor management join cooperation.

It’s no wonder worker are cautious about going out on strike. More often than not the worker is prepared to fight but the union hierarchy is not. We are faced with a war on two fronts. One is against the employers, but the other, a much harder one, is against the concessionary policies of our own leadership.

This Video is About American Heroes. Not The Hollywood Ones

Richard Mellor

A friend of mine who is also a public sector worker sent me this video. The Trump and all previous administrations have cut funding to public services including vital services to one degree or another, all in the interests of efficiency. Often it is the poorer communities that are hit the hardest. Trumps beautiful bill is nothing but a save declaration of war on public sector workers. Remember, we have too many holidays here in the US says Trump.

 

I remember when we had the Oakland fire here, or the Loma Prieta earthquake. When the latter hit Roger Martinez and I were about to go in to a union meeting not far from the corporation yard where we worked. Suddenly there was this thunderous sound as the quake brought down the Cypress freeway crushing huge semi’s like they were toys. We looked down the street and the lampposts shook and swayed back and forth as the road surface was lifted above the ground like a mat does when we want to shake the dust from it.

 

There were about four or five guys on the corner of the intersection that looked like they had a few too many drinks and fell to the ground as the earth beneath them shook.

 

We figured something was up and headed right back to the yard. We were joined there by our friend Marvin Cain who was also one of the key people in our union. I remember our boss making some comment about the three union guys (troublemakers bosses like to call union folk though not this one) turning up first. It was by chance as the quake happened right at the end of the day shift. But none of us hesitated to head in as the extent of the earthquake’s damage became apparent. We worked until we could work no longer to deal with the more than 150 water main breaks that the quake caused.

 

Some of us earned a lot of money that week but in emergencies like these money was not the motive.  We worked alongside firefighters as well at times and we know turning up for work for them so often meant risking their lives to help others. 

 

I got quite emotional watching this video. From what I understand these firefighters were primarily volunteers. If you go out in to rural California most of the firefighters are volunteers. As I listed to them and watched the scenes I couldn’t help comparing to the dedication and humanity of these working class people compared to the scum that float to the top of our society. The politicians that bury their snouts in the public trough and the moneymen that buy them. People who make the decisions and write the laws that harm working people and deprive us of security and a means to maintain a decent life.

 

With all our weaknesses, working class people are truly the salt of the earth. When we feel disgusted and embarrassed at those who have the power and wealth in society, that do no productive labor and talk tough when they blame immigrants, the poor and workers in general for the failings of a system they govern, remember who fights the fires, who cleans the streets, who cares for the sick, who teach our children who drive our buses and all those that make society function.

 

Governments are governments and the majority of those governed are working people. Most people no matter which country have little respect for those that claim to represent them.

 

When Tucker Carlson talks of us as Americans as all the privileged in society do, they stress that in order to include the working class, to imply that we are all equal in this society and have the same opportunity and the same values. 

 

The folks in this video are American’s and they are Americans we can be proud of. We work with people like this every day. We can be sure we’ll never meet Tucker Carlson, Onan Musk Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos or any of their ilk when danger calls. They don’t fight wars and they don’t put our fires: But they do start both of them.

Afscme Local 444 History From a Participant #2

Richard Mellor

I'm reposting this that I posted a couple years ago as I just noticed the video was private. I've changed it to public and it's a little bit of labor history, my former local Afscme 444 during the early eighties.

As I say in the video, it's not likely I will write about this history so I'll speak it for my own satisfaction and for my grandchildren and anyone else who might find it interesting. As far as workers as union activists go, it's pretty similar to all of them. It is, after all, working class history and that history belongs to the vast majority of us but it is hidden and ignored by the big business media. When we think about it, the 44 day Flint sit down strike should be labor's 4th of July. The regular 4th of July is the celebration instituted by the capitalist class of the British colonies on this continent, in particular the northern industrialists, honoring their break from the semi-feudal British Empire.

The first short I did is here.   https://www.facebook.com/679989067/videos/2039094356431052/

Some Thoughts on Sara Nelson’s General Strike Call

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

3-18-25

Some  Thoughts on Sara Nelson’s General Strike Call

 

‘We Have Very Few Options But to Join Together to Organize for a General Strike’ AFA President.

 

Fighting words from American Flight Attendant’s union president Sara Nelson in response to the Trump Administrations’ threat to take collective bargaining rights away from the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) workers.

 

But I have heard this sort of rhetoric from top labor officials on various occasions in my 30 or more years active in the US labor movement. When John Sweeney defeated Tom Donahue for the president of the AFL-CIO in 1995, the Federation’s first contested election in history, he came out guns blazing, “We must first organize despite the law if we are ever to organize with the law.", he said, and talked about blocking bridges as Martin Luther King did in the Civil Rights Movement. Sweeney went quite rapidly from blocking bridges to building them with the employers through the Team Concept and the disastrous policies that flow from it.

 

Andy Stern took over at the helm at SEIU after Sweeney’s election as AFL-CIO head. "We like to say: We use the power of persuasion first. If it doesn't work, we try the persuasion of power" Sweeney told the WSJ in 2008. He’s big in the hedge fund industry these days.

 

I listened to Sara Nelson’s interview on Work Bites where she was asked about the comments. She talked of the assault on federal workers and what it means for all of us. She stressed that privatization is at the core of a lot of the attacks and how important unions are in providing security and safety on the job and also in the communities we serve. This is particularly the case for workers in the airline industry. This is all good stuff. 

 

The interviewer raised the lessons of PATCO the 1981 strike of Air Traffic Controllers that was crushed by Ronald Reagan, a nasty anti-worker anti-union president. Reagan fired more than 11,000 of the strikers for refusing to return to work and forbade them from working in the industry for life (the ban was removed in the late 90’s).

 

I recall that strike very well and the AFL-CIO leadership did nothing of any substance to help win it. PATCO was demanding a 32-hour workweek without loss in pay and significant wage increases. As always, the mass media made the strike all about money but it was much more than that; stress and time off was a major issue. I spoke to one PATCO striker about the issues at our Labor Day Picnic, and he said safety, stress and time off were important. “Do you play PacMan?” he asked me. I told him I loved PacMan and he responded, “Well when two blips collide on my screen I lose 400 people”

 

After the AFL-CIO leadership’s refusal to mobilize to defend PATCO and generalize the battle (Remember Carter had begun the deregulation binge before Reagan) the bosses figured they had a green light and went on the offensive. There were numerous attempts through strike action to push back. Eastern Airlines, Greyhound and the year-long Hormel Strike by UFCW P9. PATCO and the strikes that followed were defeated through a powerful combination of the employers and the refusal of the trade union bureaucracy to bring the national power of oragnized labor to the war.

 

And This is not the first time Nelson has raised the issue of a General Strike. Back in 2019 at an AFL-CIO awards dinner she, “….asked AFL-CIO leaders to talk to their locals about a general strike…” as TSA employees were working without pay. “Go back with the Fierce Urgency of NOW to talk with your Locals and International unions about all workers joining together - To End this Shutdown with a General Strike.”

 

Perhaps Sister Nelson was a bit naïve expecting the vociferously pro-management labor hierarchy to go back to their members (most of them never ever meet member’s) and talk about a General Strike, but I don’t think so. In her interview and other comments I’ve read she basically addressed workers in general reminding us we have, “very few options but to join together to organize for a general strike.”

 

She does not address her colleagues atop the AFL-CIO. After all, building the momentum for a general strike in the US, a nation the size of a continent, will take some effort and organization. It will also take money and the resources the AFL-CIO has are in their hands. Most important; it will need some real demand and a strategy for winning them.

 

Collective Bargaining Rights.

So I take Sara Nelson’s comments with a grain of salt and the fact that it seems her main focus is the right to bargain. This is an important right indeed but it’s not the most powerful weapon the working class has, withholding our labor power and working class unity is key.

 

Collective bargaining rights are important to top labor officials, Sara Nelson included, because without them the union officials have no job. Not only do they have no job, they have no legitimacy at all in the class war between labor and capital. Central to the Wisconsin events in 2011 when thousands of people surrounded and occupied the State Capital the two issues that mattered were collective bargaining rights and dues check off where the employer collects the dues through payroll. These two issues are paramount for the paid officials as without them they have no money and no seat at the table. 

 

Using Sara Nelsons Statement

 

I think those of us in unions can, as a Facebook friend pointed out, use her statement in our union activity and the internal struggle we are forced to have with the present leadership and its class collaborationist policies, Sara Nelson included. 

 

We can introduce resolutions in our locals centering Sister Nelson’s call and supporting it. But we should go beyond her focus on just federal workers and their jobs or the right to bargain. Most Americans want Medicare for all. Most Americans want mass transit rather than more roads and vehicles and three-hour commute times. Most Americans want decent housing and affordable rents. Most Americans care about the environment and want environmental protection. Most Americans believe the $7.50 federal minimum wage is a disgrace and even a $15 an hour wage poverty wages. Most Americans oppose the US war machine’s endless wars and the Gaza genocide. We live in a democracy apparently but have no way of realizing our desires.

 

A general strike will have to be built over a period. Resolutions should be introduced at the local level, sent to local labor bodies, District Councils, Central Labor Councils and call for funds and resources to be used to call regional and statewide meetings to discuss and prepare for a 24 hour national work stoppage at a set date. The money and resources the AFL-CIO gives to the Democratic Party can be used to organize ourselves instead. The Democratic Party should play no role in such a development.

 

Now we know the present leadership will not take such a path. That doesn’t matter. Whether a resolution passes or not is somewhat secondary as the debate around it and the ideas discussed will begin to take on a life of its own. If a small local, or groups of rank and file workers and allies can muster the resources and organize a meeting then do so. Get locals that will endorse it. The debate will influence consciousness.

 

This is the way we can take Sara Nelsons fairly innocuous comment and make some hay with it. 

Afscme Local 444. Sick Leave Struggles in the 1980's and 90's

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED

 

Some labor history focusing on workplace struggles and contract battles. One of the major issues in dispute on the job as far as my activity was concerned was the issue of sick leave. At one time when we filled out a sick leave slip at work, we had to say what we were sick with. Of course, “sick of being work” is not a valid reason so people would write headache, stomach upset or whatever. We fought that on the basis that we were not doctors and were not qualified to say what caused us to feel sick that day. There were all other issues around it including how long we had to be off before seeing a doctor. Also the employer dealt with what they called sick leave abuse in a very arbitrary fashion. We didn’t like them having an average use by which they determine abuse. It’s not rocket science to recognize that historically the boss wants you at work all the time and certainly doesn’t want to pay you when sick

 

The US has one of the worst sick leave (mosty no sick leave) programs in advanced capitalist economies. We came out of our strike in 1985 with a Sick Leave Verification Program that was adequate. But, contracts are very temporary things as the tendency of the boss is to violate it as soon as the ink is dry. The best defender of rights we have on the job is the workers ourselves. Don’t start work early, don’t violate rules that protect you and the union as a whole and so on. Years later my employer was undermining our negotiated sick leave verification program. I was retired a year or so but wanted to make sure my co-workers understood what we had and that they should defend it which sometimes means a struggle against your own leadership on many occasions. 

This is the history of my local union's sick leave struggles during my years active and I wrote it in order to help members in the defense of their sick leave rights with a little historical background. I am sure other rank and file activists like myself in other workplaces and industries have similar experiences as we did. Perhaps you will find this interesting reading as well. 

 

Don’t Give Away Your Sick Leave Benefits

 

Some History on Sick leave Verification (SLVP)

 

Before I retired from the District in 2004 there was an ongoing attempt by the District to weaken Article 16 (sick leave) of Local 444’s contract.  The District’s main concern was sick leave verification.  The problem for the District was the clause in Local 444’s contract; in 2003 it was 16.1.6 and in various contracts has been titled, “Limitations”. It has consistently prevented the District from arbitrarily imposing discipline and restrictions on sick leave use, unless the Union agrees to it. 

 

In the last contract that I have, 1997-2003, 16.1.6 states, “A doctor’s certificate indicating time under a doctor’s care, approval for return to work, and any work limitations is required if sick leave extends to ten (10) consecutive workdays or more.”

 

The only difference between the language here and the corresponding language in the 1974-76 Local 444 contract is that the number five changes to 10. (Article 16 section 1F, Limitations)

 

It can’t get any clearer than that.  YOU DON’T HAVE TO BRING A DOCTORS SLIP UNTIL YOU ARE SICK FOR THE TENTH DAY.  That has been the case from 1985 until fairly recently.  The exception to this was if the employee was on the District’s Sick leave verification program (SLVP).  The problem, particularly in the past 10 years or so, is that the SLVP, introduced in its present form after negotiations in 1985, is too restrictive for the District, it doesn’t allow them a free enough hand.

 

History of the SLVP post 1985

Prior to 1985 there were numerous letters of discipline and warnings issued to Local 444 members that also informed them that their sick leave was excessive and that any further use of sick leave would have to be “verified”. Local 444 members were also told to bring in doctor’s slips despite being off sick less than five days.  Sick leave verification was also an issue with 2019 members in the Lab at SD1 and it is no coincidence that most ,or all, of this 2019 unit stayed out with Local 444 in the strike.

 

At this point in time, the District’s definition of “abuse” was not clearly formulated as confirmed by Don Crum’s memo to Phil Utic and Pete Mitchell dated 10-26-84.  Crum advocated using the District’s annual sick leave average which at that time was seven days.  This issue was an ongoing one with the District at this time.

 

The Union, some folks like Richard Mellor, Kathy Cheetham, Wayne Tomasek and Joe Montoya among others, Filed grievances under article XV1-1F of the 1982-85 contract which stated (you guessed it) “A doctor’s certificate indicating time under a doctor’s care, approval for return to work, and any work limitations is required if sick leave extends to ten (5) consecutive workdays or more.”

 

District’s Defense

The District tried to dodge this powerful clause and claimed that it had the right to verify sick leave any time it wanted and cited another sentence in the famed sick leave clause that states, “All sick leave use is subject to review, verification, and approval by the District” This sentence was in the 1974-76 contract and all subsequent contracts to my knowledge. (I will return to this later) .  The Union struck by the strong language in the contract that protected our members and argued that the disciplinary letters were in violation of the five-day clause and attempts to verify even after five days were arbitrary and left the door open to favoritism and discrimination.                                                                                 

 

How It All Changed

The issue was resolved in the 1985 negotiations.  The Union accepted the District had the right to deal with abuse but not to violate our contract by doing so.   The 1985 negotiations introduced the Sick Leave Verification Program that didn’t violate our contract (444 members did not have to bring a doctors slip before 5 days per the contract and the District would not demand verification prior to that unless an employee was put on the new program) The program satisfied the Union in that the District had to go through a procedure that would clearly show abuse and had a series of steps to it and wouldn’t be used in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner.

 

A supervisor would have to compare carefully the employee’s sick leave to the average employee but needed to look for patterns that signified abuse like Mondays and Fridays etc. If the supervisor determined the employee was using excessive sick leave or was an abuser then they counseled the employee and if it didn’t improve, the employee was to be told that they would be placed on the SLVP)  The SLVP, a product of union management discussions, was added to PPS&P #20. On May 10, 1985 Artis Dawson sent a memo to Audrey Daniels, then Local 444 President confirming that these discussions had taken place and that the District was modifying its SLVP accordingly.  

 

An important part of the SLVP and something that we will return to is actually the motivation for the District’s renewed offensive.  Local 444’s contract stated in Article XV1 1D (1985) that members could use two days sick leave a year for family medical emergencies and it defined family, mother father etc.  The Sick Leave Verification Program which the District and Union accepted states, “Sick leave  used for family medical emergency use should not be used in calculations for determining abuse or excessive use of sick leave.”  The Union wanted this in the SLVP and the District agreed to it. Artis Dawson’s 1985 memo to Audrey Daniels itself confirmed this, “The two days maximum medical emergency use existing in the Memorandum of Understanding will not be used in calculations for the Sick Leave Verification Program.” (Artis Dawson to Audrey Daniels may 10, 1985)

 

The Union was happy with this agreement and the District agreed to pull all the letters in people’s personnel files relating to this issue.  The Tentative Agreement dated 5-13-85 to which this writer was a participant states, “..the Union will agree to drop the arbitration and all grievances filed regarding employees sick leave verification and will not challenge the District’s right to verify sick leave in the future.”    

The Union accepted the District’s right to verify sick leave under the sick leave verification program.  The Union never gave up its defense and rights under the five day clause (now 10) of article XV1.  Both parties agreed to drop all proposals regarding sick leave.  The District in 1985 had a proposal to “clarify” their right to demand verification using the sentence in the contract “All sick leave use is subject to review, verification, and approval by the District” The Union did not agree that this meant the District could demand a sick leave slip or discipline members prior to 5 days as stated in the contract.

 

The Sick Leave Verification Program clarified the issue somewhat and the matter was settled….for a while.

 

After 1985

Naturally, the minute the ink on a contract is dry, the employers try to violate it and take back what they were forced to concede through negotiations and the fear of strike action.  But after 1985 supervisors now had a clear process for dealing with sick leave abuse.  They probably didn’t like it because it made them work but it protected Local 444’s members and that was good for the Union.  But then things changed.  The Family Medical Leave clause was the problem.  

 

Look at these figures:

 

Number of sick leave days a year that can be used for family Medical Emergency by contract year: 

 

1985-88: 2 

1988-91: 3

1991-94: 6 

1994-97: 13

 

Here’s a big problem for the District.  The Sick Leave Verification Program stated as clear as a bell that  “Sick leave used for family medical emergency use should not be used in calculations for determining abuse or excessive use of sick leave.”  But by 1997 this type of leave had amounted to 13 days. Local 444 got this after it was won by 2019.  The District was in a panic.  People are calling in family sick and we can’t nail them for it because we can’t use thirteen of these days as a calculation for abuse or excessive usage.  The District was in trouble. It wanted to eliminate this obstacle.

 

The 1990’s

All through the nineties whenever over-zealous District supervisors tried to discipline people or get them to bring in doctor’s slips prior to the ten days as stated in Local 444’s contract, the Union stopped them. If the employee was sick for ten consecutive work days or more then the District could demand a slip and its other rights under this clause.  If an employee was considered an abuser or an excessive user then there was the SLVP and its guidelines. The procedures for the SLVP including sample letters for supervisors to use were outlined in the management manuals.  If this was violated it was due to either the lack of a Union presence or a weak Union presence but either case doesn’t deny the Union its rights. I know that myself Roger Martinez,, Cheryl Zuur and others fought the District aggressively during this period demanding they use the SLVP.

 

By 1994, seeing there were 6 days that could be used to determine abuse, the District had a proposal for a sick leave use standard.  To my knowledge they did not get one.  By 1997 when myself, Roger Martinez and Cheryl Zuur were in negotiatons, the District tried again to claim that, according to the contract,  it had the right to demand sick leave verification whenever it wanted to.  This is what they claimed in 1985 remember.  

The lead negotiator for the District, a man named Fleming was told about the SLVP program and was told to visit 1985.  We had already won that battle over when the District can and cannot ask for a slip or verify.  In other words, the District was returning to the same, worn out defense that the contract said, “All sick leave use is subject to review, verification, and approval by the District”.  The Union demanded that they use their program but we were defending our contract which made it very clear that a doctor’s slip was not needed prior to the tenth day unless a person was on the SLVP.

 

Fleming agreed to check out the 1985 agreements and the District attacks on sick leave in 1997 were repelled.

 

The Present

Since I have retired and since the two people I worked with most closely on these issues, Roger Martinez and Cheryl Zuur, have not been active in the leadership of the Local, I am not sure what has occurred since 1997.  What I do know is that during the Presidencies of Robert Lopez and John Hayden, the District found two Union officials who supported their views and made their arguments for them.  On more than one occasion I had discussions with Both Hayden and Lopez where they both defended the District’s right to verify and ask for a doctor’s slip anytime.   They both refused to use their positions to defend the contract when the infraction involved a Local 444 member that they considered “weak on sick leave”.  I have no idea what, if any, agreements they might have made with the District since 1997.

 

These two presidents made the same arguments that the District made in 1985 only it was the late nineties, early 2000’s and we had the Sick leave Verification Program.  If the District didn’t want to use it that wasn’t the Union’s problem, it was based on an agreement with the Local.   Our contract was clear and it is what we must defend. Sure, on a first reading it might seem that the statement that the District uses from the sick leave clause gives them the right.  But there is history here.   The Union had been through that but there was no way Hayden and Lopez would abandon the District’s position.  Anyway, even in the worst case scenario, there are two sides in this world, if the language is somewhat vague in any instance, the Union should defend that which best protects its members, not take up the employers’ position.

 

During the last contract negotiations, despite strenuous objections by Roger Martinez, Cheryl Zuur and Richard Mellor, the leadership of 444 and 2019 made a mistake; they took the issue of negotiating changes in critical PPS and P's, such as this one, off the table. As a result they have now been in negotiations for TWO years. It has come down to the wire now on this issue of sick leave, which the District is determined to change. On Thursday Sept 29 there is a joint special meeting of the locals to discuss and determine what language will be accepted at the table.

 

 FIGHT BACK

 

Defend the contract.  It is clear: “A doctor’s certificate indicating time under a doctor’s care, approval for return to work, and any work limitations is required if sick leave extends to ten (10) consecutive workdays or more.”

 

The District has a Sick leave Verification Program, they should use it.

 

If the District doesn’t want to use the negotiated SLVP program it is secondary.  The contract still stands.  Don’t negotiate away the sick leave rights, don’t let them return to pre-85.

 

If the District wants to modify, introduce or negotiate another SLVP, the Union should tell them, in no uncertain terms that “we’ll see you at the negotiating table next contract time.” This is what they would tell the Union if the Union made an error that needed corrected.   

 

I hope that this helps clear up some of the misunderstanding about the SLVP.  Most importantly, remember, the District wants you at work all the time. To hell with your family, your friends, your leisure, your personal life.  And the supervisors get big bonuses if they do their best to make that happen.

 

In this case the contract is strong, but it is stronger when backed up with a united and conscious membership that is willing to take some sort of collective action to defend it.

 

Richard Mellor

AFSCME Local 444 retired

South and Central Yards

9-28-05