President Dumps on Rep Over the COUNCIL'S Official Time Debacle

From: Dejuliis, Ralph Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 10:01 AM
To: THE MASSES
Subject: FW: What Is The True Status Of Official Time Use In Council 220?

Thanks to Kirk for sharing this with us.

Administration of the Union is really hard: there are a lot of different competing interests and personalities. Part of administration and leadership is to try to assuage every one's ego without compromising your personal integrity and the Union's integrity.

Uhhh...sometimes, it is very difficult when the Union leaders have thin-skins.

Really, if you don't want folks taking pot shots at you, don't run for steward, let alone a higher leadership position!

No matter how great you think you are, if you are too important to even make an attempt at persuading others, if you immediately launch into personal political attacks on every one who challenges you, if you are a bully at heart, for God sake, put in for a promotion into SSA management where, in your deepest and darkest heart and in the crevasses in your tortured soul which sunlight can never reach, you belong!

Part of being a leader anywhere is the recognition that there are going to be some people who ALWAYS disagree with you and are as disagreeable as they can be in their disagreements. If you can't (repeatedly) respond to them with aplomb, grace and patience, then you really do NOT have the personality necessary for any public, leadership position.

Some people in the Union, of course I don't include myself in that group, really need to get over themselves because THEY, not their critics, are the real obstacles to the Union moving forward with unity, fraternity and solidarity. They seem to confuse unity, fraternity and solidarity with marching in lock step NOT with them but BEHIND them because they, alone, are the Union and they, alone, are the only ones who have the Union's real interests at heart.

We are in the fight of our lives with management because of the official time our negotiators gave up and those people don't even know who is using the time; they don't know how it is being used; and they get nasty to anyone who asks and doesn't take BS for an answer?!

They got us in this mess and refuse to be answerable, accountable or responsible.

Ralph


From: XXXX
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2007 6:09 PMTo: XXXX
Subject: Re: What Is The True Status Of Official Time Use In Council 220?

Witold,

Thank you for your separate e-mail response to me today answering my e-mail to you of 10/19/07. For the edification of the Council 220 union leadership indicated above, allow me to quote your response:

"I only select eight 1040 and four 2080 hour officials that the C-220 EC authorized me to select. The other 1040 hour officials are selected by either RVPs or LPs. I suggest that you contact either NY RVP XXXX or Local 3360 President XXXX for information regarding your Local and/or Region. I don't know why you would be interested in any other Local or Region.

I did appoint you to one of the 1040 hour positions for that I am empowered to select.

By the way, I don't recall that you were elected to any leadership position in either C-220 or Local 3369."

First, let me swiftly deal with the swipe you made in your last sentence above. If you want to denigrate me in my role as a Council 220 Representative as a non-leader who has no business asserting that he is a leader in the narrow sense of being elected to a union position, that's fine. I was merely asserting that I was a leader -- as well as everyone listed above -- in the broad, democratic sense that we are more involved with the running of Council 220 than the average union member and each of us has a direct, positive impact on the union at different levels of the organization. However, whether I or any of the above unionists copied on this e-mail are leaders is besides the point for the real focus for all of us has to be the state of the union, which, I am sure, we are all concerned about.

Also, I didn't write to you and Debbie to find out if I was a 50% union official for I can look on OUTTS and see that my yearly maximum allocation of official time is 1,040 hours. (I guess the implication of your response is that I should be happier than a pig in shit because I got 1,040 hours of official time this year.)

And you go on to state that you don't understand why I would be interested in any other local or region. Witold, my work as someone who has litigated arbitration cases at the Council, regional, and local level has required me to travel throughout this country in assisting locals, regions, and the Council. Naturally, as a committed unionist, I am concerned about other locals and other regions throughout the Council. Since I am a Council Representative, the business of Council 220 is my business too.

No, the reason why I wrote to you and Debbie about the official time issue is because I, as someone who has litigated more official time grievances at the arbitration level than anyone else listed on this e-mail and who has been fired twice by this agency in two separate disputes over official time, am sincerely concerned about the status of official time for the whole Council -- even though I am not a member of the EC, nor a member of the EB, nor am I an LP blah, blah, blah ... In other words, even if I was the lowest union member on the totem pole of Council 220, I would have still have the right, by virtue of my standing as a union member in this Council, to ask about the status of official time in Council 220.

Now to the substance of your 10/19 e-mail in which you describe how last fiscal year "many 1040 union officials did not use 1040 hours in FY 07." This should be an embarrassment to us as a union! If one reviews the Horowitz Award from 2006 pertaining to the agency's denial of official time for union officials during training, a Council 220 arbitration case which I represented the union at which we unfortunately lost, one will note that Arbitrator Horowitz delineates the history of official time use at the beginning of his award and indicates that under our prior 2000 National Agreement, Council 220 had 224,000 hours of official time but under the current 2005 National Agreement we were reduced to only 143,000 hours. According to my math, that works out to a 36% decrease in the availability of official time. Another way of looking at it, is that under the prior 2000 National Agreement, our Council had between 86 and 93 100% union officials, and now, under the current 2005 National Agreement, we only have 4 100% union officials. No matter how you look at it, Council 220's available bank of official time plummeted under the new contract.

Therefore, based on the fact that the amount of official time was drastically reduced under the present National Agreement, such that we, at most, were only allocated 4 100% official time positions, and 77 50% official time positions, it would obviously behoove us as a union to utilize our use of official time to the greatest extent possible. I think it goes without saying that our management counterparts at the next contract negotiations, which are not far off, will hold any failure on our part to use any and all of what little official time that we now have available to us, against us.

It is a known fact that last fiscal year, we did not designate 77 50% union officials nor apparently once we did designate 50% union officials did we make sure that those we designated all fully utilized their official time. (The official time debacle becomes even more shameful when one realizes that there is a union official of the commitment and caliber of Council Representative John XXXX who is only designated as a 25% official time user even though he has recently assisted Attorney Patti McGowan in research and appellate work and is currently representing a terminated employee in California in an upcoming MSBP hearing.) Therefore, in light of that, please share with all of us the following information: 1) exactly how many un-used 50% official time positions there were last fiscal year, 2) exactly how many underutilized 50% official time positions there were (meaning those 50% union officials who did not utilize their maximum amount of 1,040 hours of official time (unless they were in CR training) last year), and 3) whether Council 220 used all of its full allocation of 143,000 hours of official time last year.

This information is vital for all of us to be knowledgeable of before we go into the next contract negotiations with the goal of increasing both our total Council 220 official time allocation as well as the number of 100% union officials and 50% union officials in the Council.

Thank you.

Sincerely and Fraternally,

Kirk XXXX