Thank you to Bryon Grant for all the hard work he done in putting together the Baseball Tournament.

The tournament raised approximately $1500 for Juvenile Diabetes. That is over $2600 in 2 years.

It was a great time, the Niagara Detention Centre beat the Fallsview Mutts in the finals. The will receive a plaque to hang up in their workplace.

Thanks to Grand Central for donation of shirts, Elbow Room for the gift basket, Tom Raper from Good Life Fitness for the donation of a 6 month membership, the Silenzis Family for donating the bat, the concession stand volunteers, the umpires and all the players for making this event possible.
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Today the Union met with the Employer. We both submitted proposals and are working on an agreeable process for booking time off. We are going to be exchanging documents via e-mail. Once there is an agreement, it will be posted on the facebook page, the blog and at both sites.

ARBITRATION: JUNE 21, 2011

USE OF INDIVIDUAL DAYS:

The Union and the Employer have come to a settlement with conditions.

The Board used for this arbitration is to remain seized. What this means is that if the Union and the Employer cannot meet and come to an agreement the Arbitrator will give us a ruling immediately.

The settlement that we agreed on is as follows:

 

·        employees may at any time apply for individual VTO including at peak times

 

·        the Employer does not have a policy of a black out period for individual VTO

 

·        no application will be refused on the basis of a black out period

 

·        the decision of approval or denial is made entirely on availability and operational requirement as provided in the Collective Agreement

 

·        it was clear that this will apply this summer as in other times during the year

 

·        it was agreed there would be a meeting to put together a procedure to follow for scheduling individual VTO days

 

·        if that meeting is satisfactory to the Union grievances will be withdrawn       

 

·        the Union can ask Arbitrator to reconvene the hearing if it is not satisfied

Today was packed full. Started our day at 8:30

In the morning we went to a 3 hour workshop on Attendance Management.

This is a growing area of concern for many workplaces.

This is a subject that we have been talking to our employer about.

It was good to hear that we are not the only ones with this problem. We are also heading down the right path with the work on Attendance Management.

Over lunch we talked with the members from Windsor and Rideau. We discussed similarities that we have around issues and bargaining.

We all come up to bargaining around the same time. It will be very important to be able to work together around language.

In the afternoon they had planned Bullying and Harassment. We talked with the facilatator an changed the topic.

It was only the Casino', AGCO and 1member from another workplace.

We talked more on attendance management.

Then we moved into workplace issues and how to handle issues for members. We also where able to talk about the importance of grievances.

We had dinner with the members from the slots and have come up with a few ideas on how to support each other in the coming months.

We need to be progressive. I won't post the ideas, as we don't want to tip our hat to the employer.

Stay tuned for Sunday updates. It will be early to bed tonight and up early to meet with the other casino's to talk about bargaining language.
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BPS Conference broke us into Regions the electoral riding.

We had a presentation by Randy Robinson a Political Economist.

He talked to us about the different political opinion vs facts.

How the political environment effects bargaining and unionization.

How corporate tax cuts effects how we work and live

He also talked about how media is controlled.

We then heard from Marc Zwelling, vector Research.

He talked about elections and how to approach nominee's with issues. How to identify the big issues that are affecting our member and community.

How the deficit affects the working class and what corporate tax cuts are doing to Ontario.

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Today Rob Gale and myself are heading to Toronto for the Broad Public Service Conference.

Not to sure what to expect as we are in sector 20 the general sector. It is a mixture of a number of different workplaces.

We hope to meet with the other 2 slots and see if we have any like issues that we can grieve with the same language and talk about bargaining.

As you know Windsor Casino always bargains first, then we all follow. We need to look at language and put some of the same language on every bargaining table.

I will keep you posted through out the conference on what we are doing and talking about.
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