POPA and management have completed five weeks of CBA negotiations. To date, the articles we have
covered are work schedules (Article 24), leave (Articles 25-32), articles 1 and 2 (basic legal information),
dues-withholding (Article 11), pay-leave earnings statement (Article 23), probationary employees
(Article H), POPA additional proposals (Article M), and retirement counselling and planning (Article J).
Training has been partially discussed.
The parties have agreed in principle (but not completed and signed off yet) on work schedules available
to employees and are still discussing leave. Some remaining issues:
- Management wants the overtime and compensatory time eligibility to be the same, unlike
today. This discussion has been placed in the parking lot for further discussion at a later time. - Management wants all leave requests to be made by entering them into WebTA. We have
brought up that many times it is not possible to use WebTA (such as last-minute sick leave
when not feeling well) and other times it is actually easier to send an email than try to enter
the leave in WebTA (such as requesting FMLA, maternity/paternity leave or different number
of hours over a period of time).
Training, included a general discussion of Article 20 (professional development) and Article 21 (non-duty
time legal studies training). We will return to the training articles again in mid-June when SME (subject
matter experts) are available again.
Next up are Articles 10 (Association Facilities), Article 9 (official time), Articles 36, 37, 38 (office space,
regional offices and acquisition of new space), Article D (EEO). The lettered articles are POPA articles
with no corresponding management counterproposals. We expect management will present
counterproposals as we discuss these articles.
After that set of articles, we plan to move on to Articles 12 (grievance procedures) and 13 (arbitration)
as well as Articles A (adverse action and disciplinary actions: conduct), B (adverse actions: performance)
and C (performance management).
More updates will be provided as we continue negotiations.