ATU 757 RESPONDS TO TRIMET PRESS RELEASE

As you know, the Union has offered to begin negotiations even though it is still awaiting a judicial determination on whether the bargaining sessions should be open to the public. It has informed TriMet that an extensive number of sessions will be required to address the 400+ contract changes TriMet has proposed. TriMet representatives appear to be balking at that request, claiming the agency has proposed fewer than 30 changes. Given this huge discrepancy, we feel it is important for everyone to understand how we arrived at our number of 400+ changes.
As anyone familiar with labor agreements and contracts understands, revisions made by an employer to the sentences in a single paragraph can mean sweeping changes to a number of employee rights and working conditions.
Therefore, in order to identify the full impact of the changes, Union officers spent hours going through the TriMet document line-by-line. The result is the attached 11-page inventory of TriMet’s changes to the parties’ labor agreement. Each change is identified by Article, Section, Paragraph and Topic category. This information allows you to locate the change in the TriMet document.

The accuracy of the Union’s 11-page inventory of changes can be verified by comparing its entries to TriMet’s proposal. The webpage below links directly to TriMet’s proposal. That proposal identifies the changes TriMet wants in the form of cross-outs and underlines of the text. Note that TriMet alone made all marks in this 169-page document. (this link does not work, good job atu)

In the meantime, as soon as the two teams have settled on an initial round of bargaining sessions, we will post/email the schedule to everyone