Recent grievance wins for unit 1 members
10:06 AM - February 20, 2010

About 2% of Unit 1’s 45,000 members have pending grievances. The four departments with the largest number of grievances are: Employment Development Department (EDD) — 327 cases; California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) — 95 cases; Caltrans — 93 cases; and State Compensation Insurance Fund (SCIF) — 66 cases.  

Here’s a sampling of some recent wins:

Overtime opportunity & out-of-class work

Issue: Local 1000 filed a grievance for an associate financial aid analyst who was both denied equal opportunity to work overtime at the Student Aid Commission and was working out-of-class. The grievant’s co-workers were permitted to work hundreds of hours of overtime, while the grievant – the most senior in her unit – was permitted to work only a few hours.

Contract article: 19.2, Overtime; 14.2, Out-of-classification 

Resolution: This case was settled with the grievant being paid $5000 in compensation for denied overtime hours. In addition, the same employee received $3500 for working out-of-class as an associate Information systems analyst.

Holiday credit

Issue: Local 1000 filed a grievance on behalf of a senior programmer analyst who works a 9/8/80 schedule at the Board of Equalization (BOE). BOE refused to give the member holiday credit when a holiday fell on his regularly scheduled day off.

Contract article: 7.1, Holidays

Resolution: This case was settled with BOE agreeing to credit the member for lost holiday credits.

Alternate work schedules

Issue: Local 1000 filed a grievance on behalf of an associate environmental planner (natural sciences) in the state’s Military Department (DOM) who was denied an alternate work week schedule. DOM said the denial was “due to the global war on terror;” the Union said the denial was unreasonable and unrelated to work demands.

Contract article: 19.8, Flexible Work Hours

Resolution: This case was settled when DOM granted the grievant’s schedule request. In addition, DOM agreed that “no [future] request shall be unreasonably denied and all requests must be approved or denied within 30 calendar days.” The timeline requirement is an improvement over current contract language which does not specify a response date to a request to work an alternate work schedule.

Travel expenses

Issue: The Employment Development Department (EDD) failed to reimburse mileage when commute expenses increased because of a temporary relocation of the Roseville office.

Contract article: 12.1 (F) (b), Business and Travel Expenses

Resolution: This case was settled when EDD agreed to pay the affected workers 100% of the cost of their increased mileage. About a dozen employees were impacted by this settlement, with some receiving as much as $700.