HEARING POSTPONED
As you all are aware the State Supreme Court has granted CSEA a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) prohibiting the implementation of the vaccine mandate for non-judicial Court employees.
Judiciary Local Presidents have been notified that UCS attorneys have made a motion to consolidate all court cases involving the Unions against UCS regarding the vaccination mandate….thus Judge Silverman has postponed today’s hearing once more. Our new scheduled date is Friday October 15th.
What does this mean?
The temporary restraining order (TRO) continues to be in place, therefore the Court System is prevented from moving forward with the vaccine mandate until at least next Friday. On Friday 10/15 we expect to have our second hearing, at which the Court will listen to additional arguments from all parties and decide whether or not the TRO will be converted into a preliminary injunction. If the court does convert the TRO into a preliminary injunction, we believe it will last for 60 days, during which the state Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), which enforces public sector labor laws, will be ordered to rule on the underlying Improper Practice Charge previously filed by CSEA.
CSEA’s Improper Practice Charge is based on the Court System’s unilateral imposition of a change in the terms and conditions of employment, without negotiating those changes with CSEA. A decision in our favor will require the Court System to negotiate the vaccine mandate with the Union.
To those who are unvaccinated, You do NOT need to be vaccinated if that is your choice, the deadline has been removed for now. Additionally the deadlines for proof of vaccination and submission of requests for exemptions do not apply to employees represented by CSEA. Please be aware that in the interim CSEA members that have not submitted proof of vaccination, continue to be governed by the weekly testing policy.
CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS
Judiciary local Presidents met on Tuesday and Wednesday this week to finalize our initial contract proposals to the Unified Court system. We will be meeting once more this coming Tuesday in preparation for our first negotiations meeting on Thursday October 14th. As we progress through negotiations I will keep the membership up to date via these notices.
NEW YORK HEALTH ACT
CSEA has launched a campaign to defeat the proposed legislation called the New York Health Act. While this legislation is billed as a way for New York to get to Universal Healthcare, which is something CSEA supports in theory, we CANNOT support this bill. The NY Health Act would force all New Yorkers into the same public health plan, even those of us who currently enjoy negotiated health benefits that are better than the public plan. The legislation essentially ignores our negotiated health care coverage, and it would be a budget exploder, costing a huge price tag which no legislator can tell us how much it will cost workers. We had some great questions brought up about this bill at our ADM, so our Legislative and Political Action Department has made the following Q&A flyer available to help answer members’ concerns. Please visit: https://tinyurl.com/ny-health-act-flyer and then visit our Legislative Action Center at: https://cseany.org/issues to take action today.
NEW GROUP SOLICITING UNION MEMBERS
We have learned of a new Anti-Union group that is sending emails to CSEA membership by way of their work addresses in an attempt to get them to opt out of the Union. While I have not heard of this affecting our Judiciary members as of yet, other groups have tried this tactic before. While we have no reason to believe these attempts will work this time any better than they did when it’s been tried in the past, we must all be diligent in keeping an eye out for these emails and responding to the members affected. If you receive an email attempting to get you to opt out or hear reports of other members receiving them please report that to me immediately.
Everyone have a Healthy and Happy Long weekend!