The leaders of one state employee union subgroup have written a letter asking their union not to proceed with a vote on the proposed concession package.
Seven elected leaders of the Engineering, Scientific & Technical Council – also known as P-4 – wrote a June 13 letter to Connecticut State Employees Association President Patrice Peterson claiming “there can be no valid vote on any alleged agreement.”
“We the undersigned are writing to you to express our concerns that the most recent SEBAC 2011 negotiations over-stepped their legal authority,” the seven P-4 leaders wrote.
According to the letter, the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition is empowered to negotiate for health and retirement benefits, while state law gives responsibility for all other bargaining to the “employee organization designated in as the exclusive representative of employees in an appropriate unit (which in this case, is the P-4 Council of CSEA).”
Under the concession agreement, state employees will receive no wage increases for two years and then 3 percent increases for the following three years. Under the existing contract, P-4 members would have received 2.5 percent increases July 1.
SEBAC did not allow P-4 leaders did to participate in the negotiations, according to the letter.
“Therefore, we urge you to take no action to attempt to conduct any vote on any agreement which was not negotiated by the duly appointed negotiations committees for each CSEA council, and to withhold CSEA’s vote on the SEBAC agreement until all of CSEA’s constituent Councils have had the ability to negotiate and vote upon their individual bargaining unit agreements,” the letter said.
John Vitale, P-4 president; William Richards, P-4 vice president; Byron Lester, P-4 treasurer; Peter Macher, president of Chapter 9; Robert Reilly, executive council delegate; D. Jay Young, executive council delegate; and Stanley Juber, executive council alternate, signed the letter.
We have been very fortune with the work Mr. Richards has done for us. He has worked to fight for us on grievance issues, winning reclasses, and giving us the truth.
Funny how you are right on point but way off the mark. Those brave 7 are taking on the fight for every members right to a fair and open voting process. Read the letter, nowhere in there are they advocating a vote one way or the other, but to not vote until every member has excersized there right to bargain the best deal THEY feel they can get, if they evey want to bargain at all, considering they already have an agreement in place which the adminstration do not want to honor. You seem to have forgotten all the past legal challenges that even created collective bargaining in the first place. You think legislatures just woke up one day and said to themselves lets give state employees collective bargaining, hell no, brave union members took up the fight and won that for us. No you knock that same kind of strong leadership and you can’t even recognize that they fight for all of us to maintain rights we have that are being ignored by SEBAC leadership. If you not going to fight with them, then you will be the reason collective bargaining will be lost, act weak and you’ll be seen as weak.
I am not a P-4 union member. But I happen to work at the same Agency as William Richards, P4 –Vice president, that signed the letter. Due to the budget cuts my unit will be eliminated. If this agreement will not pass thousands of State Employees and I will not have a job. This is about my health, my house, my kids and the food on the table. I hope who is voting no will keep it in mind.
From the beginning of this agreement William Richards always had his personal selfish agenda. He was trying to press and misinform ALL EMPLOYEES of the Agency to vote against the SEBAC by making all kinds of lies that are not based on facts. That anyway it will be lay offs and Governor will push 24 furlough days, and for four years it will be no raises and all State Employees will have a Medicaid-SustiNet insurance.
Mr. Richards doesn’t care about membership. It’s all just his greed. In addition he is so heroic, because he has all protection of the Union, which ideology and beliefs he doesn’t support.
dol.govdol.govhttp://www.dol.gov/olms/regs/compliance/rrlo/lmrda.htm#1 Go to this US Department of Labor website, it shows how much our unions paid for SEBAC last time during our givebacks in 2009. 1199 gave $ 146,978, CSEA gave 96,530, Council 4 gave 120,000 and AFT CT gace 66,423, for a grand total of $ 429,931. Not to mention that CSEA also gave Bob Krzys $84,984 for his legal services, can’t wait to see how much this “informational tour” (NOT) is going to cost us this time.
No authorization was necessary. It is called freedom of speech. Individual members raised issues as “We the undersigned….”. Your characterization of members that voice concern about the way the negotiation “process” was handled, or just don’t like this agreement as greedy and selfish, is a joke. You couldn’t possibly know other members circumstances or reasons for their vote. What is already ending collective bargining is weak, jellyfish leadership that allow bad deals like this to be voted on.
Zach, Please stop brainwashing us state employees. Hopefully you are not responsible for the missing employee suggestion box as well…..
Finally, something positive. I can feel good about my P4 bargaining unit. I work with an individual who has been on the P4 side of negotiating the last four contracts, he was on of the signer of that letter. He’s insightful and he listens. I think he was surprised at the positive feedback he got from many coworkers including people from other bargaining units.
What about the 20 years that you enjoyed the benifits and protection because of the union. Do you think that your healthcare, pension, hours, payrate, sick and vacation time would have been what it was without collective bargining. You’ve prospered and now you have no loyaltiy to the membership…..sad, sad bitter person, oh yeah and did I mention greedy.
Greedy, selfish people like these 7 will help bring an end to our collective bargining rights in this state. They acted without authority….there won’t be a better deal around the corner. Vote yes.
osc.ct.govosc.ct.govIf you compare the elements of the State document found on a state web site, you can see that the TA reads a lot like the document. So the question can be asked, is the TA a backdoor implementation since HB 6305 has not passed yet? The state document does say the state employees will be first in the plan as mentioned in the document.
http://www.osc.ct.gov/public/pressrl/2011/Complete%20Final%20Report%20to%20the%20CGA.pdf
The document is the SustiNet Plan created from Public Act 09-148
Inclusive, the Public Act Sec 14, (1) The Department of Revenue Services modify state income tax forms to request that a taxpayer identify existing health coverage for each member of the taxpayer’s household.
Larry Dorman was just on Channel 3 and admitted that some unions who voted still don’t have all the information in the agreement, so how can they be voting. There leaders need to wake up, stop the vote and get everyone the information so they can make a fully educated decision.
Nobody is going to listen or care about this letter. There just complaining because they’re not getting raises
Awesome work!
https://wisdomovertime.wordpress.com/
Awesome work!
https://wisdomovertime.wordpress.com/
Glad to see someone has a spine…thank you P-4. Please keep us posted on where this challenge is going, if and when you get a response from CSEA or SEBAC. What does this mean for members of P-4….do they go thru with scheduled vote ??
What is the opposite of Livingston? It’s the P-4 team! If you are an older, early Tier II state employee, there’s nothing in the concessions, to benefit you. Vote “NO”.
votenotoconcessions.com