Union/Management Meeting

Tuesday, April 13, 2004

(Union Hall)

In Attendance:

Management Union

Trent Clausen, Director Katie Coleman, President

Bonnie Scribner, 2^nd Line Supervisor N Tim Lovaasen, 1^st Vice President

Pat Fahey, 2^nd Line Supervisor S Greg Perez, Area Vice President

Stewards:

Rich Lassahn, Dan Jerde, David Barthel & Dave Andresen

This meeting was held in order to address issues the Outside Technicians are having with day-to-day operations and Company expectations. Topics of concern included were improving the daily work environment for Technicians and working relationships between Supervisors and Technicians. The following is the Union’s concern followed by the Company’s response:

1) Supervisors giving work to Technicians without asking if they can cover it.

Pat and Bonnie will talk to their 1st lines to improve communication with the Technicians regarding this problem.

2) Technicians having to page or call supervisors two or three times in order to return work they are unable to cover.

Pat and Bonnie will attempt to fix this problem. They said the 1st line supervisors have two to three conference calls a day and because of this are sometimes unable to respond in a prompt time frame.

3) Technicians are being loaded with 5 to 7 jobs to start, and then Tech Load adds more work on them later in the day. Also, why are the Technicians loaded for 10 hours of work in an 8-hour day?

Trent Clausen said they are working on fine tuning Tech Load in an attempt to keep techs in the same area in order to diminish travel time, and are looking at how much work each tech is loaded with.

4) Why are the techs getting repeats on basic tag orders with the proper remarks, but repair screening sends out a repair report not an order?

Pat Fahey responded to this by saying the trouble may still be outside and a repair ticket is necessary to verify dial tone at demarc, also adding that many of these situations are unfortunately unavoidable.

5) Technicians are being loaded with too many 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. access window tickets in a day with no one to cover. Would having fewer late techs during the week and on weekends resolve this problem?

According to management, they look at their numbers and say the current number of late techs are needed so the company won’t take any misses on tickets at the end of the day. They will monitor this issue monthly. 

6) Technicians are having trouble with the new Tech Tad equipment losing signal, having to re-boot two or three times a day, and final testing taking too long. In the case of a vehicle accident, is there a safety issue involved with the truck mount and the fact that the test equipment is not reliable?

Trent Clausen responded by saying they are continually working on any programming problems (working out the bugs) and the signal loss issue. Trent added that documentation of any Tech Tad problems by techs will help speed up this process. In response to the safety issue, Trent said he was informed by the Company that there are no safety risks to techs with the Tech Tad mount in the vehicle, but would consider adding some kind of strap to secure the Tech Tad to the mount when the vehicle is in motion and only if we guarantee it would be used. Trent will also look into what is causing testing delays.

The above situations where discussed in great length along with other issues such as technician PNI’s, repeats, overtime, seasonal part time, CBR issues on orders and repair tickets and the current surplus. Your Local Union Officers, AVP’s, and Stewards will continue to work with management in an effort to solve these problems and any other issues that may arise in the future.


Respectfully submitted by,
David Barthel – Steward

opeiu #12/ns