If you’ve belonged to ESC Local 20 for a long time, you may not understand what all the fuss is about among ESC’s new members. Under the 2006-2008 ESC-PG&E Neutrality Agreement, non-union employees could join ESC through a simplified procedure without management interference; if a group voted to join, management agreed to add them into the ESC contract and limit negotiations to items specific to their classifications: job descriptions, salary ranges, overtime eligibility and a couple other items. These groups all joined ESC in 2006 or 2007 and finished negotiating agreements in 2007 or 2008. Rough total is 300 employees. Project Engineers
These groups joined ESC in 2008, and do not have a signed agreement (as of April 2009). Rough total is 500 employees.
These groups are still in bargaining over a Letter of Agreement to finalize their classifications within ESC. However they are already represented by ESC and considered ESC members – for example they have the right to union representation if they are disciplined. What is the problem? In one word: EQUITY. Especially for Engineers, the Engineers who joined ESC in 2008 are not being offered the same salary ranges and other working conditions as the Engineers who joined ESC in 2007. This is a one-to-one comparison: Civil Engineers in Hydro not getting the same deal as Civil Engineers in Substation or Transmission Projects; Electrical Engineers at DCPP not getting the same deal as Electrical Engineers in M&C (to say nothing of a potential nuclear premium), etc. These new ESC members don’t want more than the other employees in ESC, they just want the same thing. Management already agreed to rates of pay and overtime policies for more than 300 Engineers, Project Managers and Analysts – but now they won’t provide this for other employees with exactly the same job titles, qualifications and duties. Pensions If you didn’t know, the union pension calculation is different from management. The biggest difference is that management has a higher multiplier applied to your retirement salary than the union (1.7% for management versus 1.5 and 1.6% for the union). So if you come over to the union side with the same salary, your pension will be smaller. This problem was resolved for the first 300 employees because they converted their non-pensionable STIP bonus into base salary, offsetting the smaller multiplier with a bigger base amount. In fact there is now an incentive to retain these experienced employees since it will take a couple more years for them to maximize their base salary. Management refuses to make this accommodation for the other 500 employees. Even for employees with 30 years or more of service, management is refusing to keep their pension benefit whole. Reducing an employee’s pension because they joined the union is not fair. And especially in difficult economic times, pensions are even more important. ESC is fighting management’s proposal to reduce pension benefits. This is the #1 reason that there is conflict with management over the new members. What about STIP? STIP is the bonus program for non-union employees. Before they joined ESC, all these employees were part of STIP. Employees didn’t like STIP for a number of reasons, but primarily because it was arbitrary and subject to favoritism, it was not part of their pension. The first 300 employees got out of STIP – their final package had no STIP and instead had base salary increases. They also had their final STIP payments pro-rated up to the date that they got their first union increases. (This was the result of an arbitration settlement that ESC won, not out of the generosity of management). The thinking was that you either get a Progressive Wage Increase (if you were union) or STIP (if you were non-union). Since these employees were transitioning from non-union to union, ESC and management agreed that they would get STIP up until the time that they received their PWI. So if the raise was later in the year, they would get a bigger bonus and vice-versa. The 500 other employees are still collecting credit towards STIP, which they should be paid once their agreement is finalized. They don’t want STIP in the future – but until they get a fair salary range and a union salary increase, they want the bonus money that is due to them. Management is now threatening to renege on this agreement by taking away the STIP bonus that employees already earned for an entire year that they didn’t get PWI raises. Hydro Bargaining Employees in the Hydro department joined ESC in February 2008, and still don’t have an agreement. In fact, management has taken an extremely hard line with this group, seeming to “make an example” out of them for anyone else who was thinking about joining ESC. Management made a “final offer” and has refused to consider any modifications, even though:
ESC finally put management’s “final offer” out for a vote. Managers, including the Vice President of Hydro and the Senior Vice President of HR, launched a campaign of intimidation, threatening to take away bonuses if they employees voted “no”, and telling them that this offer was “the best you’ll ever get.” Despite the threats, employees rejected the offer by a 2-to-1 margin. And STILL management refuses to offer these employees the same conditions already enjoyed by 300 ESC members with the same job titles. Diablo Canyon and other groups Bargaining Management’s offers for the DCPP Engineers are equally unacceptable. The insulting proposals including down-grading of titles (specifically, changing “Senior Consulting Engineers” to “Senior Engineers”), salary ranges below the comparable ESC groups, and management control over promotion. In Environmental Services, management has refused even to make a salary proposal after over 6 months of bargaining – they want ESC to agree to their proposed job descriptions before we get to discuss how much they will be paid. What is ESC going to do? It’s clear that just talking to PG&E management doesn’t work. Management does not want fairness. They are out to punish these employees for joining ESC. After more than a year of frustrated negotiations and intimidation, our patience is up. ESC plans to respond by finally going public about PG&E’s anti-union behavior. We will hold pickets and informational events to inform the community that PG&E is not fair towards their unionized employees. PG&E claims to be a pro-union company, which helps them politically in Northern California. ESC will use political and public pressure to force PG&E to live up to its stated principals. We hope you will support our campaign! Please Click Here to sign up to attend our first informational rally at 77 Beale St:
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