Supplemental Midwest Bargaining Report 2015 CWA/AT&T Midwest Contract Q&A s

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1 Supplemental Midwest Bargaining Report 2015 CWA/AT&T Midwest Contract Q&A s This is a series of Q and A for the CWA/at&t Midwest Contract. The contract covers thousands of members in hundreds of titles and locations. Taking that into consideration, it is recommended that members look at the Q&A s concerning the contract they work under (in our case the Midwest agreement), as to avoid any conflicting information from other contracts or inaccurate information from other sources. It is important that members evaluate the provisions of the entire agreement when considering their ratification vote. Q. What is the bargaining process in the Midwest? A. In the Midwest, we typically start our bargaining process approximately one year before the CWA/at&t contract expires. Other than staff support assigned to support the Committee, the members of the Committee are all elected by the members through their officers. The officers attended a Bargaining Unit Meeting in April of 2014 to elect who they felt was in the best position to become the Bargaining Committee for the full term of the contract. The members elected are officers who represent a wide range of titles and job functions across the five states. They are supported by their peers and sent to do the hard work of dealing with at&t in the bargaining process which, as you can imagine, consist of hundreds of hours of analyzing information, doing calculations, and arguing back and forth with their Company counterparts across the table. Q. How is the ratification vote conducted? A. The detailed summary and ballot are printed by an independent union printing shop and mailed to the last known address of each member by an outside mailing house. Ballots are returned to a P.O. Box. Locals send rank and file members to verify only members voted and count the ballots assisted by the clerical workers. No staff is involved in the process. Only votes cast by members in good standing will be counted. If you don t vote, it won t be counted. Q. How did the Committee categorize the issues? A. The Bargaining Committee develops their agenda from many different sources. 1) Grievances and arbitrations from the current contract to determine problem areas of interpretation. 2) District-wide Local officers meetings of concern. 3) Requests submitted by the individual members through their Locals and, this year, from the National Bargaining Council Meeting held last fall. From those sources, the Committee develops a bargaining resolution and agenda for negotiating with the Company, which was also approved by the Local officers in the fall of The Company, of course, has their agenda. 1

2 Q. Why does it take months to get a TA? A. As mentioned earlier, the Company also had their agenda, which was to eliminate most of the gains made in the 50 plus year history of our contract with at&t and its predecessor Companies. There is no time limit on how long negotiations will take to achieve our goals. Q. Why are bargaining reports so general? A. In this round of negotiations, the Committee tried to have more detailed reports; however, during the bargaining process things change on a daily basis, and nothing is final until we reach a final TA. When the Committee members are elected by their peers, of course, they entrust them to be involved with all the details of bargaining, which is impossible to put in bargaining reports. Q. Why didn t we go on strike? A. As always, a strike is a possibility if the Bargaining Committee determines that would be the only way to achieve a settlement. Strikes are not taken lightly, and the decision to call one would have to go all the way to our CWA President, per the Constitution. In this case, your Committee continued to move forward by constantly pushing the Company at the table every day, even against their will, along with the huge support of the members in D4 with their mobilization activity. Q. Why are the base wage increases always at the top step of the wage scale and exponentialized down with no change in start rate? A. The decision to put the full base wage increase at the top step of the wage scale is a simple one. All our members spend almost all their careers at the top step of a progression scale in whatever title they work in so it makes sense to put as much money as possible at the top step. Q. I was surplused and had to take a lower paid title during the last contract. What happens to my wage protection? A. All protections were continued through the new contract so members, who were able to take another job under our employment security rather than be laid off, continue their protections from the old contract into the new contract. 2

3 Q. I have heard the phrase we will be better off at the end of the agreement than we were at the beginning. How is that calculated? A. It is based on adding up the total new dollars the member will receive over any increase in health care costs. The Bargaining Committee, in our case, worked with our lowest paid members using the family premium and paying maximum deductibles all three years of the contract to make sure that, even in that extreme, the financial package left those members better off at the end of the contract than the beginning. By working with the lowest paid, we knew all titles and wage zones were better off in either the traditional health care or the new option two, which allows for even more savings for those members and families that have lower usage in healthcare. Q. I was hired during the 2012 contract and didn t have any employment security. What happens to me? A. Everyone hired during the 2012 contract are now added to the employment security language (EEOP) Q. What happened with overtime in the Midwest? A. In the Midwest, all current overtime language was protected, with the exception of Appendix F which was reduced to 14 hours. Q Why are all of these comments on social media. A. Of course, everyone has a right to express an opinion, and social media outlets are a way regardless of where the information came from or whether it is fact or opinion. CWA District 4 does not use social media outlets for any contract information. Any official District 4 information will be posted to the District website, sent to officers for distribution, or mailed directly to members. Q. What is the difference between the core contract and the appendixes? A. The name of CORE is used for a few different things. It is used to distinguish the main Midwest Contract from others in the Midwest, such as Mobility and Internet Services. It is also referred to as the old regulated side of the business or the Traditional Telephone Work. The Appendixes are supplements to the core contract, such as Appendix A (MOA s) and Appendix B (titles and wages). The newest appendixes F & G are supplements for particular product lines in which the Company wants to compete or used to be referred to as the unregulated side of the house. 3

4 Q. Why weren t the appendix (F) members brought into the core contract? A. This Committee tried to get the Company to move on this issue. However, it was an issue we were not able to accomplish. The Midwest Committee made the decision to address the concerns and demands our Appendix F members had rather than continue to try and place them in a different part of the contract with their concerns not addressed. The Committee was successful in protecting the gains made in the two previous contracts, in addition to addressing their key demands surrounding quality of life issues. As mentioned above, in addition to lowering the cap on the unreasonable amount of mandatory overtime, the Appendix F members now have additional days which count toward the calculation of overtime, additional MOA s added, including full access to both the Midwest staffing system and the National transfer system, which they previously had limited access. An additional demand time off was negotiated and additional pay for PremTech and Dispatchers prior to the GWI increase. The additional job duties for PremTech include Pair Changes, limited fiber cross-connects and fiber drops. (Excluding Fusion Splicing, which remains Top-Craft work) and Bridge Tap Cancellation devices, (excluding splicing them into cable pairs.) For the first time, the Job Duties will be part of the negotiated letters, which means they can t be changed without negotiations, as in the past. Q. What changed with attendance? A. All current employees will have the same language as previously, including the Common Attendance Plan, which the Committee was able to protect. Anyone hired after ratification will have up to 40 hours paid personal illness hours per year. Q. What Holidays did they change? A. The holidays in the Midwest contract did not change and continue through the term of the agreement. Q. What about SSP going forward. A. As a result of new regulations in the Affordable Health Care Act and IRS guidelines, members will receive awards in cash. Q. Is the 2015 wage increase retroactive? A. In the Midwest, the 2015 wage increase will be retroactive if the contract is ratified on or before June 26,

5 Q. Why doesn t the Company negotiate for current retirees? Current retiree issues, by law, are a permissive subject of bargaining and not a mandatory subject of bargaining. This simply means that both sides have to agree to negotiate over those issues. The Union Bargaining Team constantly demands to bargain for retirees and, of course, the Company refuses. In this round of bargaining, the Committee with the help of our District Vice President was successful in getting the Company (outside the formal bargaining process) to commit to funding the HRAs in 2016 for Medicare eligible retirees at the same level as Non-Medicare eligible retirees will continue to have benefits available to them at the same level as current employees. The Company also committed to discuss them with the Union for future years. Q AT&T makes a lot of money. Why is it so difficult to negotiate with them? Unfortunately, at&t, like any other corporation, is profit-motivated and shows most of its loyalty to its shareholders and leadership. One of the most difficult responsibilities of any Bargaining Committee is to take on the balancing act of improving our members and families standard of living while protecting their employment security and keeping as much work in the Midwest as possible by not pricing ourselves out of the work. Technology will continue to change our members jobs and the work they do. The elected Bargaining Team pushed extremely hard to maintain what we have, along with making improvements over the previous contract in wages and keeping health care cost shifting to the lowest it s been in years. Q. Does the Committee recommend ratification? A. Yes. The Committee unanimously recommends ratification of this contract 5