It is my pleasure to submit my first report for my activities from September to April since taking over asRVP for Deer Lodge Centre. It has been an extremely busy time with numerous grievances, the labour adjustment that happened, dealing with Bill 29 and preparing for the upcoming representation votes and some changes with the Employer here. It has been a huge adjustment since becoming the RVP for Deer Lodge, but the support that I have received from the National team has been outstanding especially with all the support from our National President, Virginia Vaillancourt.
I have made sure to have open lines of communication with the Local Executive here as we have had communication issues in the past. I attend the bi weekly Local Executive meetings as often as possible.We have had to deal with another labour adjustment that took place with reductions in hours and positions deleted. Employment security notice was given on October 9th, and there were six meetings trying to come to an agreement, including one meeting that Prairies REVP (Marianne Hladun), and NP (Virginia Vaillancourt) attended with me. The Employer was not willing to discuss other options instead of deletions, so an unfair labour practice complaint was filed with the Manitoba Labour Board which as I am writing this report, we still have not heard back. November 29, layoff notices were sent out to 32 employees, meetings took place from December 10-21 and 8 employees were laid off. The changes went into effect January 11, 2019; and the units are still adjusting to all the changes.
We have been very busy dealing with grievances with issues from not following our collective agreement for vacation planning, not posting positions as full-time, and a grievance regarding the wages in dietary.
Preparations are still ongoing related to Bill 29 and the upcoming representation votes. We have attempted to gather some support in organizing here at Deer Lodge but the turn out and response has been minimal unfortunately. We still do not have a timeline as to when the votes will occur, but most likely before the fall.
There has been a change in Human Resources in February; our HR Consultant has been let go. Not many details have come out as to why it happened, but it appears as Senior Management is trying to improve the morale of the staff here.
Staffing continues to be an issue constantly. I have raised the issue with our Chief Nursing Officer, and acommittee has been setup to work on implementing the Heavy Workload form again and make an actual process for dealing with being short staffed. The initial meeting went well, so I am hopeful that something good will come out of this.I would like to thank the entire National Executive team for the warm welcome and any support that I have required since I joined them in September. I look forward to continuing fighting for all our members at Deer Lodge.