All,

This DC Local Bargaining Proposal was submitted to Corporate on April 13th 2020, and we just now got them to agree to a bargaining date – Thursday, June 11th at noon. Local Bargaining is an extension of National Contract Bargaining which resulted in the ratification of a new National Contract on May 1st. Local Bargaining is taking place in DC and other cities to address issues of mainly local concern, mostly wage rates (“Schedule A).” Our wages in DC are on average the second lowest in the system, only behind Chicago, and Motivate fortunately agrees that this needs to be fixed.

The contents of the proposal were determined through input from the Contract Surveys you filled out last year, from the Local Bargaining Committee (consisting of each shop steward in DC), and through comparing notes with NYC’s Schedule A. A general meeting was held on March 11th at Lamond-Riggs Library to begin discussion of the proposal. The subjects of bargaining that appear in the proposal were announced in the Monthly Bulletins and on Facebook. Besides Schedule A, they include Policy Infractions, Winter Weather, Employee Parking and Bereavement Leave.

It is important to remember that this document is ONLY OUR FIRST PROPOSAL and is entirely subject to collective bargaining, as equal parties, with the employer. The Local Bargaining Committee does not know how the Company is going to react to anything contained in the proposal, but we are doing our best to prepare for several different scenarios. It is not likely the meeting on June 11th will be the only one, but we should have a much better idea of how this is going to go afterwards. 100% member engagement in collective bargaining has always been our goal, and we will continue to work toward that end as local negotiations unfold.

– Jason & Patrice