October   7 — Board Meeting, 12-1, KSC, 4G
October 14 — Board Meeting, 12-1, KSC, 4G
October 21 — Monthly Member Meeting, 12-1, KSC, 5B C

The subjects include Wastewater Mediation and Political Action;

there’s an important note for Transit members regarding the Medical Benefit Spouse Access Fee;

finally, there’s an announcement regarding a request for leave donations, and the calendar of upcoming meetings.

Summaries of TEA member meetings for 2007 and 2008 have been posted. They are indexed on the Meeting Summaries page.

I’ve update the ‘grievance matters’ page to reflect the current Grievance Committee Representative list.

Dear Transit TEA Members -

The County has provided the target dates for implementation of the arbitration award.

In a phone conversation with TEA’s attorney, the following schedule was provided by the County:

• The March 5th paycheck should reflect your new payrate based on the arbitration award formula for ‘05, ‘06 & ‘07.  Please check your pay stub carefully, and verify your new wage.
• The Retro Checks should be issued by March 19th.

This is the most up to date information that we have.

The first mailing of the TEA Times, dated January 8, 2009, has gone out to Transit and Wastewater members.  If you missed it, you can find the mailing archived here.

Calendar events can now be found on the TEA Calendar page.

Dear TEA Members,

Many of you are receiving pledge cards to consider joining 117.  Now is a critical time, because of the furlough.  If enough of you sign cards, The Teamsters will file a petition to represent TEA members in Wastewater and ALL bargaining will cease.  This means for certain, any chance of settling the furlough effects will be delayed for several months.

The King County Council has given HR another week to see who they can sign on to the TA and it’s in our contract offer.  However, once you sign cards, the bargaining process cannot continue and the representation process must go through to a vote even if you just want to test the water, so to speak.

There is a lot to consider, not the least of which is our dues will increase $700 per year for the average member, nearly $1000 a year for those of you at the top.  If the economy really is crashing, is now the time to spend more on dues just to switch unions?

Thanks for listening. - R. Browne

Just as I’m attempting to post the new Council Reps page, the teaseattle.org provider has fallen into a coma.  The site seems to be … gone!  I’ve been using them for my own site for the past six or so years, with nary a glitch.

Update: Up and running again, some time after 7pm Pacific time.

Just another day in the Northwest, I suppose.

December’s a busy month. So much so that the regular monthly meeting and the grievance committee meeting have been cancelled.

I’ve added a link to a test-only, not-yet-official TEA event calendar to the TEA home page. The link is on the left side of the page, under the home page posting date, along with all the other links, as well as here in this posting.  It’s intended to be helpful, but if I find that nobody cares, I will probably take it down.

If you happen upon it, send comments via the comment section of this blog, or with one of the Board members.