Presidents Report

December 2009

2009 is coming to a close and as of the end of January 2010 approaches so does our Collective Agreement. We have set the date with the company to start our bargaining process on the 19th of January. The bargaining process has been historically slow and sometimes frustrating at this site. This round looks like it may be same and may be a very difficult and challenging round due to the economy. The company has always believed that they were short on cash, and anything we asked for was literally going to break them. We believe they will have this approach once again. We have developed our local proposals with this in mind. We want to go into this round to achieve fair and realistic gains, while maintaining what we presently have. We will do our best to convey this message to the company. We will inform them that working conditions, hours of work, the right to organize and to grieve, seniority and good wages are the building blocks of the foundation for the Union movement. That at this time and place, with the economy showing signs of coming out of this recession, we are not interested in removing any of the blocks of our foundation.

As you may be aware of, local 848 has ratified to be part of the National Pattern bargaining process. This National Pattern will determine the wages and contract length of term for the entire industry. We have always done well by participating in this National Pattern and once again fully expect to. However we will not be able to conclude our round of bargaining until this National has been set. This in the past has taken longer than we would all like, unfortunately, our site does not want to be the leader to set this National Pattern, so we will have to wait until another site has set it. Once this happens we will hopefully be able to wrap up our local bargaining session quickly, so we can all get back to normal. I will be sending you periodical updates to as how the bargaining process is proceeding. I will not be able to give you details of the process, as both parties have agreed to confidentiality until we have reached a tentative deal. When we get there we will hold ratification meetings to allow you to review the deal, and then vote on it.

On a separate note we are presently involved in arbitration over an alleged Cardinal rule violation. We have had 2 days so far and the company has still not finished presenting their witnesses. We probably will not have any further dates until the new year. We will let you know more when the process is over.

The drug and alcohol grievance has finally had the arbitrator's report published. It however is in French. Once we have the English version, and I have had time to go over it with our lawyer, I will let you know the outcome as it pertains to us.

We are still working on the FTW policy they presented to us. We have a grievance in on the policy conditional on being able to make the program an actual beneficial health program. The present program has too many unknowns, and a potential to allow people to be arbitrarily dismissed. We will let you know when and if we can come up with a program that truly meets the end goal of having people fit to work with out comprising their privacy or principles.

In conclusion I would like to wish you and all of yours a Happy Holiday season and hope you have a great 2010.

Thanks,
Mark.

`````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

September 2009

Hello and welcome to the second edition of the President's report.

I hope you all had a great summer. Hopefully you got to spend some time away from work doing activities you really enjoy. I know for myself summer seemed to go by really quick, that there was not enough time to do all the things I wanted to do, and now...it is back to work. It almost seems like the start of a new year. That we are back to having our general meetings, dialogue with management has resumed, and it is good to see the JH&S committee has also resumed their duties.

Now that we are back there are a few things I would like to update you on:

1) The company has agreed to amend the consent letter for the new IT medical data base. This is a new data base and in order to collect and store your data they need your permission to do this. They showed the Executive a copy of the consent form. We told them NO, we will not have the membership sign this. After further discussions the company agreed to amend the first line, which tried to back door the FTW program into being accepted by the Union. We also got them to spell out exactly who has what ability in looking at the data.
We are still awaiting a new revised copy of this letter from the company, once we get it we will send you a letter saying it is ok to sign.

2) The A&D grievance, the hearings have now wrapped up, we are awaiting the report from the arbitrator. Talking to the President of the Union in Montreal, they feel confident that the policy as it was will not stand. Parts of it will be found to be unconstitutional and will have to be removed. We will let you know as soon as we hear anything.

3) The FTW surveillance program. We have filed a grievance on this program based on the outcome of the meetings we are having with the company. The company has agreed to delay implementation of this program, here at SMC, until we have reached an agreement. We have been in touch with our lawyer on this issue, and continue to consult with him on an ongoing basis.

4) Life Saving Rules. You may be aware that we have just recently had another alleged Cardinal rule violation. We are awaiting the outcome of the companies decision and are fully prepared to go to the wall on this one as well. Do not get me wrong, these are good rules, just the severity of the discipline is unacceptable, and we will challenge them on this every time we have to. I have talked to the Shell Workers Council out of the States, and they have told me that they have had several terminations for the Cardinal rule violations, and have got all of the jobs back in arbitration. The company is bent on upholding these rules, so please be careful. Be safe and take the time to ask yourself if you are being safe, and are obeying all of the Cardinal rules.
Our arbitration on the last alleged Cardinal rule violation is slated to be heard the first of December. We will let you know how it goes.

5) Negotiations. As you are aware 2010 brings us to the end of our CA. Al has sent out a note asking for your suggestions to as what Local 848 should be proposing for this round of negotiations. I suspect this to be a very challenging round, with the company crying the blues about money. There is no doubt the present global economic situation does play a factor in how we have to approach this round. We will be looking to the National Union, as well as any other sources we can to educate us more on the situation now as well as for the future, so we are better prepared to negotiate a fair and hopefully lucrative contract.

We will be attending a few things in the near future which should better inform us on how things are going in our industry as well as the whole economy. The Ontario Federation of Labour conference is coming up in November. This conference networks most of the Unionized workers across the province, both public and private sectors together in a forum to better the rights and privileges of all the workers of Ontario. It will be a very interesting conference as the current President of the OFL is going to step down. The politics have already started as to who will replace him. Will the Steelworkers put another of their members in or will CUPE push their candidate? Will let you know when we do.

All for now....
Mark

 

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

May 2009

Hello and welcome to the first issue of the President's Report.

We as an Executive decided that to help better keep you informed that we needed to communicate with you more. Not only more often, but in different ways. To try to do this you, obviously as you are presently on it, noticed we have a new web site. We have tried to make the web site more user friendly and will try to keep it current by constantly updating the information you as members should be privy to. You will see that we have the names of your representatives as well as pictures so you can more readily identify people should you happen to need them. We have also included links to other sites and places of information to you as well as pictures of events we as a Local have participated in. We have also included this new piece, the President's Report, in which I will try to communicate with you through out the year on issues and topics that we are presently dealing with.
So with out any further ado.....

To start with I would just like to welcome the former Local 800 members of the chemical plant to our, their new, Local, 848. The merger took a little longer to wrap up then expected, but the outcome was successful. we have grown as a Local, and in the process we have helped out a former Local who may have had troubles dealing with the company as such a small Local. Now they help to build our Local's strength by increasing our numbers, as well as bringing a strong, vibrant Union history to enrich our own Local's future as well. Please take the time to get to meet your new members and I think you too will find them to be very interesting and valuable assets.

While we are in the welcoming mode I would also like to encourage you to welcome this years new hires and CPET students.
New full timers: Corey Oana, Ryan McLean, Mark Van Damme, Sarah Robbins, Todd Bissonnette, David Ryan, Ab Haidar and Kyle Scott
CPET: David Lenuzzi and Aaron Kemp, as well as David Tyler, Amanda Johnston, Dave Benedict, Leah Diskic

As you are aware, it is getting to be negotiation time again. Our Collective Agreement expires January 31st 2010. In preparation for this upcoming round of negotiations Rick, Dan and myself went to Edmonton to the pre bargaining conference. This conference is designed to educate all the Locals who participate in the National Bargaining Pattern as to the current economic situation with not only our employers but the economy as a whole. The CEP has financial specialists that we use to help sit with government and fellow economists through out the country to get a feel for, and to help influence economic trends. One of these financial specialist delivered a couple hour presentation at our conference on what we are currently facing financially, as well as what the economic forecast may look like for the future. This is very important as we as a Union need to be realistic with what we can expect as a fair share of the profits earned on our labour, as a general increase. As well as what the future may hold for our industries so we can make sure that we tie ourselves appropriately to a contract for the right amount of time.

The conference decided the following:

Term: 2 years
Wage increase: 4% for year one, 4% for year two
Severance increase from 1.15 to 1.30 multiplication factor.

We will vote to participate in the National Pattern with a secret ballot vote on June 10th, 2009.

The National has always been a part of how we negotiate here at Shell, Sarnia. It has served us well over the years helping us achieve things we experience in our Collective Agreements that we may not have been able to accomplish on our own. Some examples of these National Bargaining Pattern gains are 37.3 hour work week and double time for all overtime, not to mention the general wage increases we have achieved over the years.

When we go to the table to bargain we present the company with three groups of proposals. One the National Pattern, two the Shell Worker Council demands, and three, our own local proposals. In the fall we will be sending you out an e-mail asking you for your suggestions as to what you would like to submit to the company as a Local proposal. The Shell Workers Council proposals are developed by the Shell Workers Council, ( SWC ), and will be presented to the company at all 4 tables at the same time. These proposals are things that can be commonly bargained by all of the groups, such as increases to our Health care spending accounts, or recognition gains, such as the CEP patches and flying our Union flag on scheduled days at the front gate. Presently the 4 Locals that sit on the SWC are Jumping Pound and Waterton, gas plants in Alberta as well as the Montreal refinery and ourselves. We formed this council several years ago to better communicate amongst the Unionized Shell workers across the country. We have now started to work in conjunction with our sister council out of the United States as we are now both owned and operated by Royal Dutch Shell.

At our last SWC meeting in Edmonton, I was voted chair person for the group and am now in charge of leading this council to become even more productive than it has been in the past. I look forward to the challenge and will try to keep you informed through this report as to what we are doing in the SWC.

On another note I have also been elected to sit on the Ontario Council executive. This role will allow me to network with dozens of Locals across Ontario to help us to better understand what companies are trying to do Unions all across the province as well as the country. This council was formed when the Energy sector first formed with the CEP to help deliver training and education to all its members. Today the council continues to educate all its affiliated members as well as to work with the National Union directly to help deliver important messages and information by structuring pertinent and topical educational seminars as well as bringing in high level speakers to address the conference delegates. Some of these speakers have been our own Rank and File members as well as political leaders like Jack Layton and Howard Hampton.

PRESENT CHALLENGES:

Fitness to work. I have sent you a e-mail informing you to not sign the consent form for the IT system, One World. This consent form is anther way for the company to get a back door approval for them to implement their fitness to work (FTW) program. We have seen a lawyer on this issue and he has advised us that the policy as a whole is definitely a violation of our rights.  We are currently having the lawyer scrutinize the whole FTW policy and prepare legal arguments for each and every contestable component of the policy. I will keep you informed to the progress of this situation.

Alcohol and Drug grievance. We filed a grievance 4 years ago when this policy was introduced to us here on site. As the SWC we also filed this grievance the same day at all the sites. We as a council have let Montreal take the lead on this grievance as to fight this in court will cost tens of thousands of dollars, so we agreed that one site would fight it and the other sites would follow the out come of the arbitrator's decision. They are looking to have finished the court work by September, and we should expect to have the report on the findings by early December. I have asked our lawyer to stay in close contact with the situation, so that we are well prepared and positioned properly to deliver the outcome of the findings. I will let you know more as we know.      

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I know it can seem that sometimes I tend to go on and on, but I feel it is important that you the members are kept informed. As I said before I will try to send you these reports through out the year to continue our goal of communicating with you better.
Until the next time

Mark.