June 9th, 2010 Meeting

There is going to be a meeting that is going to held in OCIT Room 221 on June 9th, 2010 from 5 - 7 pm. This is going to be a meeting that is for 028 employees, not just DPPA members. The forum of the meeting is going to be a quick talk by the President about where we are right now. Then it is going to turned over to you to be able to get up and have five minutes to get your point across. Then when everyone is done, we would have a discussion of what we have heard and where we are going to go in the new year.

Use Forum to Communicate

We now have the Forum setup so you fellow 028 employees can communicate to us at DPPA. You have to register so that the admins can check to make sure you are an 028 employee and this might delay you for a maximum of a day. But then you will be able to communicate anything and we will be able to see it.

Furloughs Voted Down

At the noon meeting of the DPPA Board members today the issue did not get enough votes to support the issue of furloughs for OCIT members.

That means that OCIT employees from Representation Unit 028 cannot offer to go on furloughs to save jobs as a whole. That does not mean that Board of Supervisor’s will not specify furloughs for unrepresented positions that do not save positions in our department. DPPA could be represented if we had voted to see if a union could have been formed.

Vote on Furloughs

By the end of this week DPPA Board has to decide whether we approve or disapprove of the furloughs that have been proposed for OCIT. This will save 2 -3 positions. If you can let me know what you think by emailing me at President@dppa.org that will help us make the right choice.

COLA and Furlough ...

As of today, we received a letter from Linda Eto detailing that DPPA has agreed to mandatory furlough of one day per month in Fiscal Year 2010-11 for all employees in DPPA who work in Office of Communications and Information Technology. This will be the same as last year except that the furlough time will not be Retirement applicable as it was in 2009-10. That means that for every pay period that we take a furlough, we will only get 72, instead of 80, service credits for Retirement. This will be included in the budget document to be approved by the Board of Supervisors' for the 2010-11 year.

No COLA, but Furloughs might happen ...

Last night, it was decided that unrepresented employees (028 are still unrepresented - no union) will not get a COLA in the 2010-11 fiscal year. It does not look like this will save department jobs.

However, furloughs can save jobs in the individual departments. We are talking with Linda Eto, Steve Keil's right hand person, about getting furloughs in at least OCIT and possibly other departments. It is still undecided whether this will be individual employees or whether it is going to be all employees who work for a department. Email me at President@dppa.org if you want to express your feelings.

I will of course keep you informed of what is happening as we go forward.

Meeting with Steve Keil

Steve Keil, the Director of Labor Relations, called a meeting to keep us informed of what is happening in the County. He told Logan Pratt, the Vice-President of DPPA, and me about all the layoffs this year, but he was optimistic about next year. He didn’t see growth, but at least he foretold of budgets flattening out and not the steep downward structure that has become too familiar. For this next fiscal year, I told him that DPPA would support one day of furlough per month if it could save positions. He was very grateful about this and said he would figure out who could be saved.