We’re reporting a big win for our represented employees who work remotely: our contractual right to a telework stipend will remain in force after we pushed back against a legislative effort to remove the benefit through budgetary process.

We won through a combination of members standing up and standing together to tell the legislature, “Hands off our contract.” We spoke with supervisors, department leaders, and worked the halls of the Capitol to lobby lawmakers and to drive the message home.

This victory was made more rewarding because it was a legislative effort to modify our contract, and that’s against the law. Our hard-won contract can only be modified through the process of negotiation.

The fight against RTO continues

For nearly four years, many of our represented employees have been working remotely. Now, the state is making movement towards bringing those remote workers back to the office.

This is a priority issue for Local 1000.

Changes in telework are changes in working conditions and when our employer seeks to make a change, they must notice Local 1000.

The Union bargains over those changes to mitigate the impacts. The employer may not change working conditions without considering the workers—and never unilaterally. And that’s where your Union steps in.

There is no “global” effort to return state workers to the office. Many of the RTO changes are on a small scale. We are seeing that even “agency-wide” changes are being done on a case-by-case basis.

Since 2021, Local 1000 has been responding to changes in telework and will continue to negotiate with management to mitigate the changes. We’re pushing back, saying ‘no” to RTO, because Telework Works for California!

We don’t understand why this is happening when the quality and quantity of the work done remotely hasn’t been in question. State workers have been providing vital services for California while working remotely and doing a great job!

Join the fight to preserve teleworking and to push back against RTO

Local 1000 has created a fight-back tool kit so we can continue to send the message that telework works for California.

Click here to read more and to join the fight!