CAT Tracks for June 6, 2002 DOCK DAY PAY - JUNE 14TH

ON VACATION

During a grievance meeting on Thursday morning, Superintendent Isom informed CAT representatives that the teachers who were docked a day's pay will have to wait until the June 14th paycheck to receive reimbursement. (The dock day resulted when the District arbitrarily and improperly reduced each bargaining unit member's sick days by one for participating in the 17-day strike. Teachers who had exhausted their sick leave days were docked a day's pay on their May 30th check...much to their surprise!)

Why June 14th, you might ask? Because the Director of Finance and Payroll is taking some vacation time!

Superintendent Isom had indicated on Tuesday, that the reimbursement checks could be run on Wednesday. On behalf of the Association, I wrote him a letter advising him to do just that...and to contact the teachers so affected that the checks were available...for pickup or mailing.

Thursday morning, Superintendent Isom indicated that the Association would probably file a grievance...that Mrs. Pierce was out of the office and would not return until next Tuesday at the earliest...and that she was the only one who could run the checks.

Superintendent Isom is right about a grievance being filed...I will do so today. Unfortunately, the grievance does not have to be heard until...June 14th. So it is somewhat moot. However, it will be done for documentation purposes...documentation of yet another "in-your-face" example of the disrespect being shown to and retaliation being directed at members of the CAT.

Teachers who were wrongly docked money on May 30th should have been reimbursed on June 3rd. The teachers and the Association tried to be cooperative...giving them until June 5th, and receiving indications from the Superintendent that this would be done. On June 6th, we are told that the person responsible for the error is unavailable to correct the error...that she is on vacation! Well, we all have our priorities...gotta spend that 5% raise?

This argument is bogus for a very good reason...the error should have been corrected on June 3rd...at the same time she was fixing the excess federal taxes error. I mean, everyone deserves a vacation...but when you make errors on people's paychecks...people who are already being docked thousands of dollars each because they would not knuckle under to the Board of Education's ultimatum to accept a bad long-term contract...maybe work comes first!

Nuff said...I don't want to get ugly...but then I probably "haven't seen ugly yet"!

P.S.

I mentioned a grievance meeting...

Today's meeting was over the class action grievance filed by the Association over the District's unilateral change of the school calendar...making the last two days "regular attendance days". This punitive action required teachers to put in extra time doing the year-end paper work and "packing up the rooms"...and putting in extra time on the "turn-in-the-keys" day.

The Association is seeking two days of extra pay as a resolution of the grievance.

The Superintendent has indicated that he will respond in writing within five business days...as required by the contract.

Stay tuned...