October 10, 2006

On Monday the union met with the Region 2 Management committee for our fifth meeting of re-opener bargaining. As is our custom, we took a good deal of time and care to craft proposals that we felt would address management’s concerns regarding our wage proposals.

The good news (see title) is that after a lot of insisting, management has made a counter offer on wages which includes implementing a step system. Not surprisingly, their proposal falls very short of our expectations for wage increases. They did propose 2.5% increases between the steps (Up from 2.25% last time), but did not propose any across the board increase. Under this proposal, a new hire would make the current rate for two years. The effect right now would essentially raise all current employees’ salaries by 2.5%, but would not accelerate anyone through the steps in
recognition of past seniority, a concept that the union has repeatedly emphasized. The bad part is that the proposal would have an employee move up a step after completing of 2080 hours (full time.) That would essentially means that a part-time or intermittent interpreter could go without even a meager increase for several years, at best. Granted, we’ve all done that, already. So maybe they think we like it this way.

Now for the ugly. We made a modified proposal on vacation and leave without pay to lessen the immediate effects. We suggested delaying the implementation of increasing the vacation accrual until October 2007 and changed the language in the Leave Without Pay section to give the courts more discretion than our previous proposal would. While Joe Wiley expressed appreciation for the movement we had made, he insisted that they would not make any more concessions in those areas
until we had responded with broader concessions to their proposal on expanding our unit work to include public assistance.

We hope to make more progress on the salary article and are encouraged by the movement during this session. As far as the other article being discussed, we continue to assess our strategies. We will likely call a meeting for all employees in the region in the near future for an in-person update.

October 24, 2006

Negotiations continue to go very slowly in Region 2. During our October 24 session only incremental progress was made on wages. Management is now prepared to offer a whopping 2.75% increase per year for three years. However, they are insistent that employees would only receive an increase after 2080 hours worked, leaving intermittent and regular part-time interpreters stuck with stagnant pay. The union, of course, proposed not only a structure for step increases but across the
board annual increases. Apparently, while virtually all other employee groups in the region get those types of increases, interpreter services are not seen as valuable enough to warrant keeping our salaries competitive.

Both sides agreed that night court would policy would remain the same, except that an interpreter who works a morning only assignment would get the four hour guarantee for night court.

Holding up the whole process, in our opinion, is management’s stubborn insistence that interpreters should be required to work at counters and on the phone. The Union proposed expansion of our duties to include family law, small claims and legal access clinics, among other proceedings, but the Region rejected the Union's proposal outright. Instead, the R2 administrators insist on taking court certified interpreters out of courtrooms for out-of-court public assistance and phone assistance. By such a stance, the R2 administrators have shown they are out of touch with what Chief Justice Ronald M. George, in his State of the Judiciary Address of October 10,
established as critical for equal access: court interpreters in family law proceedings and small claims matters. They have shown they would rather have judges, lawyers, defendants, witnesses and litigants receive substandard interpreter services or none at all by taking court certified interpreters out of courtrooms while they continue hiring non certified interpreters to interpret in the courtrooms. They have demonstrated an appalling lack of knowledge of the state certification process whereby only 8% of the candidates pass by having court certified interpreters do work that requires no certification and that is currently handled by bilingual staff. It appears R2 administrators have not set foot inside the courtrooms to understand that it is precisely there where equal access is most critical and where court certified interpreters are needed to perform court and legal interpreting, ensuring
language minorities have their day in court.

The committee is planning a general membership meeting for the morning of November 4th, exact time and location to be nailed down shortly. At this time we feel the need to discuss our options face to face, so please save the date. The meeting will not take more than a couple hours.

Your Bargaining Committee:

Union Representative: