Sept. 17, 2004

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BARGAINING BULLETIN #24

RFA Management Proposes Combining Holidays & Vacation, Killing Holiday Pay

In its first economic-related proposal of the contract negotiations, RFA has proposed a scheme to combine holidays and vacation into a new category called Paid Time Off (PTO).

Under the RFA proposal, employees would add the current nine paid holidays to their vacation total and that would be their PTO for the year. In other words, a person with 15 days of vacation and nine national holidays would have 24 days of PTO.

RFA says this would give employees more flexibility in using their time off, but it also would eliminate holiday pay and be a significant savings for RFA. Employees working on any of the current nine holidays would not get any extra pay, though they could take another day off at a different time. We've asked RFA tell us how much it pays in holiday pay.

We have proposed adding Columbus Day, Christmas Eve, the employee's birthday and two personal days to the list of holidays.

In vacations, we've proposed granting four weeks vacation after three years service (currently after five years).

RFA also made a proposal for Sick Leave that essentially would continue the current policy with one major exception: RFA wants to cap the number of Sick Leave hours an employee can carry over from one year to the next. The cap would be 480 hours. Currently there is no cap.

The RFA proposal does allow the use of sick leave to care for immediate family members, which RFA would define as spouse, child or parent.

RFA has agreed with the Guild on the need for bereavement leave. Currently employees must use their personal time in case of the death of a family member. RFA has proposed granting up to five days for the death of a child, spouse, sibling or parent. The Guild has proposed including domestic partner and parent-in-law. We also have proposed granting up to seven days bereavement leave if the person lived outside the U.S.

RFA has agreed to continue jury duty leave per the current policy.

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