Unifor ACL Membership Bulletin – Feb/15

Unifor ACL

(Atlantic Communication Locals)

Membership Bulletin

February 5, 2015 

UPDATE: 2 Special Vacation Days (for Customer Care)

The Union and Company have had several discussions over the past month on the 2 Special Vacation Days. As reported in the January 29^th Membership Bulletin, the Union and the Company were not agreeing on when this would be implemented. It stemmed from the Memorandum of Agreement stating that changes to Article 26 – Vacation, do not take effect until 2016. The Union contended that the 2 Special Vacation Days should commence in 2015 because this language is Appendix KK, not Article 26. The Company maintained that the 2 Special Vacation Days are part of vacation language and should not come into effect until 2016. The Company set the vacation allotments to over 10% with the notion that the 2 Special Vacation Day process would not be in place and the Retirement Offer is putting extra pressure on the Group.

After a lot of dialogue with the Company, we have come to a compromise. The 2 Special Vacation Days will take effect immediately except that June 29 – Sept 9 will not be available. We understand that this is primetime and a lot of members would have liked to use this process to pick days in the summer but this is the best we could negotiate. If this wasn’t agreeable, the 2 Special Vacation Day process wouldn’t be available to members at all for 2015. We considered filing a grievance but even by using the expedited arbitration process, the hearing would not be held until sometime later this year which would be of little benefit for 2015.

This is a good process for our Contact Centres which gives members a little control over work-life balance and we look forward to it being fully implemented in 2016.

In Solidarity,

Bobby MacDonald                 David Gates                 Lynn Briggs                

Steve Howlett                       Mary Croke                 Joyclin Coates            

Cathy Morrell                        Sandy Brideau

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