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Pierce County: Pass our Contract
The Council has passed 13 Collective Bargaining Agreements with the same parameters that Local 17 has negotiated. We are asking for the Council to approve our Contracts at the July 14 Council meeting without further delay.
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Subject: Please pass our contracts at the next meeting
Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,
I am a member of IFPTE Local 17. We ratified our contracts on March 11, 2009. Our contracts expired in December of 2008 and we have been waiting for the Council to approve them.
The Council has passed 13 Collective Bargaining Agreements with the same parameters that Local 17 has negotiated. We are asking for the Council to approve our Contracts at the July 14 Council meeting without further delay.
In addition, all non-representative Pierce County employees have had the same proposed cost of living adjustment since January 1, 2009.
I did not receive an automatic cost of living on January 1, 2009, like many other county employees. Instead, my union spent six months negotiating the terms of this contract in good faith with the county.
The terms of this contract have already been approved by the county's own labor representatives. There is nothing special about this contract compared to other contracts the council has already approved. Our morale leading up to this delay was already low because the county has taken months to bring our ratified contract to council for approval. The Council's recent actions to delay this contract even further has left us confused and feeling unsupported.
When you (the Council) intentionally caused another six week delay with no explanation it has left us and our families hurting. For example, the Council may not be aware that employees whose spouses may have been laid off are in desperate need of additional income to support their families. The delay we have already experienced has caused additional problems for us and our families. Please remember that the 2009 COLA is only making adjustments for cost of living increases already experienced from June of 2007 to June of 2008, so we are just playing catch up.
Please reconsider what repercussions your actions have on the very real lives of the employees working hard to make this County work. We humbly ask that you make passing our contracts a priority at the next Council meeting.
Sincerely,
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