In the West Virginia Legislature in February 2010 The WV Public Workers Union supports the following bills:House Bill 4317 - This bill is a Public Workers Union endorsed bill to provide public employees and retirees with a $1,000 across the board Cost of Living Adjustment. This bill provides for the implementation of this COLA retroactive to July 1, 2009 based on the state budget surplus that public employees earned due to the statewide staffing shortage. A companion Senate Bill on this topic will be introduced soon.
House Bill 4331 – This bill is a Public Workers Union endorsed bill to provide public employees with enhanced seniority rights. Based on the existing seniority for certain employees, this bill requires recognition of seniority in hiring, promotion, transfer and layoffs of public workers. A companion Senate Bill on this topic will be introduced soon.
House Bill 4210 - This bill supported by the Public Workers Union requires the PEIA Finance Board to have a quorum of board members at each public hearing that is required to be conducted by the board. While the Public Workers Union believes that the law is clear that the PEIA Finance Board was always required to have a majority of its members present at the public hearings, the agency interpretation of the current law makes this bill necessary. Other PEIA reform bills are pending and will be introduced soon. The WV Public Workers Union opposes all benefit cuts and we oppose all cost increases to public employees and retirees while our pay is frozen and our pay remains among the lowest in the nation.
House Bill 2571 - This bill supported by the Public Workers Union will require a cost benefit analysis of all privatization contracts of public services. Although a cost benefit analysis of the privatization of public services is currently expected to be conducted by law, the failure of meaningful oversight of the privatization plans of the executive branch of government makes this bill necessary.
Additional Legislation will be introduced in both the House and the Senate – including bills to compel the implementation, compliance and enforcement of the WV Occupational Health and Safety Act for Public Workers; bills to require caseload standards for the DHHR program areas including the state hospital system; and bills to repeal the authority to involuntary transfer employees.
The WV Public Workers Union is opposed to the following bills:Senate Bill 73 and the authorization of the corresponding legislative rule in
Senate Bill 313 / House Bill 4059 - The WV Public Workers Union is opposed to these bills because they change the number of hours that a temporary employee is required to work before being covered by the civil service system from 720 hours in 12 months to 1,000 hours in 12 months. Temporary employees are denied benefits and security of tenure rights, including the right to grieve adverse treatment. These bills encourage and prolong the abuse of temporary employees and are contrary to the current law.
Senate Bill 467 / House Bill 4330 - The WV Public Workers Union is opposed to these bills because they permit the Division of Personnel to implement classification plans without any legislative oversight and with the blanket exemption of the right of public workers to appeal the implementation of any future reclassification plans. Not only do these bills authorize a blank check to the Division of Personnel to implement an undefined reclassification plan for all of state government, these bills deny all due process rights to the public workers by prohibiting grievances regarding such classification plans. This preemptive attack on employee rights is being proposed without the reclassification plans being specified and made available for inspection prior to exempting the implementation from oversight or due process first. These bills only allow limited appeals to the Division of Personnel who will implement the reclassification plans, this is particularly concerning because the Division of Personnel is the most anti-employee friendly agency in state government. The companion bills
Senate Bill 464 / House Bill 4329 stress the failure of the Division of Personnel to recruit and retain employees to the service of the government of our state and instead reinforce the role of the Division of Personnel as hostile to the employees in the classified system.
In addition to these bills, the members of the WV Public Workers Union are concerned about the alarming trend by state government agencies to implement policies that violate the due process right of employees to have representation and by the implementation of sick leave policies, such as at the Department of Environmental Protection and at the Public Service Commission which violate the Division of Personnel laws and rules regarding sick leave. These agency sick leave policies also appear to violate the employee’s right to health care privacy as specified by federal laws.
Join the West Virginia Public Workers Union in 2010 as we struggle to defend workers rights. Sign up to take our Steward Council training and become a shop steward. As a shop steward you will lead and organize your work place to help us fight back against bad management and to defend our co-workers against management hostility toward public employees. A strong union helps us protect and defend our legal rights. Join us today!Join us today by contacting your legislators and ask them to support the WV Public Workers as we struggle to protect employee rights in state government, to provide for living wages, cost of living adjustments, seniority rights, WV OSHA implementation, compliance and enforcement, and for the adequate staff levels necessary with managable caseload standards at our state hospitals and DHHR offices.
Find your legislators on the West Virginia Legislature website at this link - http://www.legis.state.wv.us/index.cfm Use the drop down menu for Senate and House to find your Senator and Delegate. You can search by zip code or district.
Why join a union like the WV Public Workers Union? A union organized workplace is able to halt bad management practices by holding managers accountable through solidarity style action. Alone we are all left to the mercy of managers who have historically gotten away with degrading employees through abusive if not hostile personnel practices.
Until you are willing to defend your own rights, then no one can help you. There are no employee rights in the work place if no one exercises their rights.
A member run democratic union gives you the training to arm your union work shop with the knowledge it takes to win against hostile management and the continued attack on workers’ rights.
Join the West Virginia Public Workers, UE Local 170, a proud Democratic union, standing up for public employees when no one else will.
WV PUblic Workers Presidents Day Rally, Feburary 15, 2010The only way public workers are going to be heard is if we organize together and take collective action when necessary to demand our rights. Our Public Workers Presidents Day Rally is one of many ways we let the legislature know about the issues that concern us.
Join us at 10:00 am February 15 in the Capitol Rotunda and celebrate with public workers from all across this state as we rally to educate the legislature and our communities about the issues public workers face.
On Presidents Day our union members will also hold meetings with our lawmakers to make sure they understand why these issues are important to us. For carpool information - call the Union Hall at (304) 699-4401.
“Feeling harassed? Discriminated against? Are you unfairly paid? Is your workplace unsafe? This is a wake-up call.