FRIDAY UPDATE
Brothers & Sisters,
Yesterday, ballots were mailed out to all 601/602 Bargaining Unit members to ratify the Tentative Agreement (TA) with the County of Los Angeles. You should begin receiving your ballots at your home today and through the weekend. If you do not receive your ballot, please contact the Union office immediately at 800-334-6285.
The Local 1014 Executive Board is recommending a “YES”vote on this contract. We believe it is a fair and rich contract that reflects the value of our members and the increased responsibility of our first responders. Please see your email for fact sheet and summary of the contract details.
Please remember:
- Ballots must be sent to P.O. Box 301905, Escondido, CA 92030. A postmarked addressed envelope will be provided with your ballots.
- All ballots must be postmarked by U.S. Postal Service and receivedat the above Post Office Box by 10:00 a.m. on Friday, January 18, 2019, in order to be counted! No hand-carried ballots will be accepted at the Union Hall or at the Post Office.
- Ballots will be counted on Friday, January 18, 2019 by California Elections Company (CEC) and results will be posted to the web and sent to stations and sites.
Thank you in advance for your vote and your voice.
Next Tuesday, January 8, 2018, we will swear in our newly elected Local 1014 Executive Board members at the Union Meeting. We are excited to welcome our newly elected members and welcome back our incumbent Executive Board members. We would like to strongly encourage all to attend and use this opportunity to make your voice heard. We need your help so we can continue to reflect the membership’s priorities with your valuable input.
UNION MEETING
Tuesday, January 8, 2019
10:00 AM
Local 1014 Union Hall
3460 Fletcher Ave.
El Monte, CA 91731
With our newly elected Executive Board in place, we will continue to push an agenda focused on better working conditions for our members across the Department. We need to continue to tackle critically important items and the lack of leadership in certain instances within the Department. We will work collaboratively with the Department as we always have but we will be the power and the strength when adversity and discourse are necessary. Additionally, we will continue to fight for our members to have fair and equitable staffing policies that address both “The Mission and the Members” to protect our quality of life and working conditions.
The responsibility lies at the top for decisions on providing the tools and equipment we need to stay safe and carry out our work serving the citizens in our communities. The Fire Chief and the Chief Deputies of Operations and Business are hereby placed on notice that we will be taking an aggressive position to achieve a leadership philosophy that not only embraces the latest technological advances but actively advocates for implementation in a timely manner.
We will start with a few items affecting our health and safety. The number one tool for keeping Firefighters and citizens safe is the use of a thermal imager (TI) on entry into structures. Operations should not sleep another restful night until we have a TI on every rig in every post position.
It is not enough to talk of cancer reduction and awareness, we must put our money and our effort behind our words. We need fully functioning and usable diesel exhaust systems in our stationsand we need to make and keep this a priority. We have come too far with our equipment and decon policies to simply look away from this cancerous killer right in our own stations.
In addition to the above direct lifesaving tools, there are indirect ways our Firefighters and members are being negatively affected. Decreasing non-emergency stress is an integral part of behavioral health. Replacing antiquated technology, cleaning up our username and password systems, the functionality of our EPCR’s and computer needs to be a priority. There is real stress created in the work of an inefficient software/hardware systems and antiquated policies and procedures like our NFIRS reporting system and lack of integration with our EPCR’s. Our payroll system and method with which we account for our members hard earned dollars is unreasonable and unacceptablewith little or no ability to understand the accounting for the layman.
We will be aggressively pushing an agenda that gets it all done and we believe that this is the year to get it accomplished. Your Union is committed to refocusing the Department and management on the most critically important aspect of a first-class Fire Department---its employees.
