Sisters and Brothers,
In my last update I discussed the result of the layoff. We have now also completed recall and brought back everyone who’s rights were open to allow them to return. There are very few people still on the street that either refused their rights at the time of layoff or restricted their recall to first shift only not allowing them to be recalled due to their seniority. With those hitting the street due to refusing their displacement rights, we also were able to make sure the Company did not dispute any unemployment claims for those individuals. This is the first time in my history with Local 1505 that I have seen the Union be able to negotiate uncontested unemployment in those cases but also see so many members recalled within such a short amount of time.
At this point we believe some areas of the layoff were handled incorrectly by the Company. The Chief Stewards that were present for the layoff monitored every step diligently and stopped the Company on a multitude of occasions from misprocessing this layoff. We have now filed a grievance for the layoff and for the recall that occurred shortly after. My team is still working to manually go through each and every step and bump from the layoff according to the procedure found in Article 26 of the CBA to find any area in which the Company may have misprocessed someone in order for it to be corrected.
At this time, some that were on a LOA status during the layoff have now returned and we have completed the process for those individuals. There are still a few members on LOA who will be processed upon their return. We have also discussed manpower and staffing for the Assembly B classification with the Company, and they have since opened 2 reqs in Marlboro and 2 in Tewksbury for Assembly B’s and recall for those 4 positions is complete. My team has worked hard and diligently not only to make sure members rights are preserved through the layoff process but also fought to get almost all recalled back from the street, we also got the company to open more Assembly B positions in other locations in order to recall as many members as possible.
