Oct. 14, 2004

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BARGAINING BULLETIN #26

RFA Management Withdraws Plan to Kill Holiday Pay

RFA management backed off a demand to do away with holiday pay in bargaining October 13.

Management had been demanding that the current system of vacation and holidays be combined into a Paid Time Off (PTO) scheme. Under that PTO plan, the nine current holidays would've been added to your annual vacation days and scheduled like vacation. That meant someone working on a holiday would not have received any extra pay.

But after Guild negotiators made it clear we would not accept such a plan, RFA management withdrew the proposal.

Instead, management is now proposing no major changes in the current vacations and holidays. The Guild countered with a proposal to increase the number of holidays by adding an annual personal day. We also want to formalize the practice of providing time off when the federal government shuts down for weather or other reasons such as Ronald Reagan's funeral.

RFA management has proposed allowing employees to donate up to eight hours of accrued vacation to an employee who has a catastrophic illness and has exhausted his or her sick leave. That was in response to our proposal to establish a sick leave bank. We have proposed a more generous plan that also would allow employees to donate accrued sick leave to a colleague in need.

Wednesday's bargaining session was the 38th since bargaining began a year ago. When the time-off issues are resolved only the purely economic items - wages, pension, health insurance, severance, overtime payments etc. - will be left. Both sides have worked hard to plow through a huge number of issues. Roughly 20 contract Articles have been resolved. The contract probably will end up with somewhere around 30 articles.

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