January 2005 Update (Revised)
Greetings to everyone! Hope all enjoyed the holiday season.
It is hard to believe that we are already in 2005. Can it be possible that three years have already passed since we negotiated our last contract? They have indeed!!
We would like to thank the membership for the tremendous response we received after distributing the “contract survey forms”. That was a very clear message that the majority of our membership realizes that this contract is about fair and equitable working conditions and that your input is critical to negotiating a contract that meets those needs.
The Stewards (Dianne, Audrey, Linda, Pat & Dave) along with President Teoli & Secretary Xavier met in early December to review the many responses that had been submitted by the membership. We are still in the process of clarifying some of the language that pertains to the contract articles that will be affected.
We will be holding our next general membership meeting sometime during the month of February, when we establish the exact date it will be posted on the union board at your location (if there is any department that does not have a union board, please contact one of the Stewards) and distributed to the membership.
When the new voluntary insurance enrollment was distributed, it came to our attention that the Long Term Disability rate had almost doubled for the new period. All employees currently enrolled received confirmation of this on January 13th via a memo from the HR Department. The Union went to Charlie Jones (temporary HR Director for the Town) for information re: disability insurance over a month ago and he made us aware that vested employees (10 years of credited service or more) would not need to purchase the voluntary LTD insurance because they were in fact covered through the Middlesex Retirement Plan. He advised that for detailed information we go to the following web site:
http://www.mass.gov/perac/pubdir/peracguides.htm
Here we discovered that there were actually 4 printable booklets of information, they are titled:
Guide to Disability Retirement for Public Employees
Massachusetts Public Employee Retirement Guide
Guide to Survivor Benefits for Public Employees
Retirees Rights & Responsibilities
The union strongly recommends that that copies of the documents be printed and available in every department to answer questions any employee (union and non-union) may have.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact any one of the Union Stewards listed below:
Dianne Cloutier/Water Dept. 692-5529
Dave Crocker/Water Dept. 692-5529
Audrey Ducharme/Fire Dept. 692-5542
Pat Matheson/Library 692-5555
Linda Zarzatian/Police Dept. 692-2161