Dear Members,
By now, you should have received the letter from statewide UUP President Fred Kowal detailing the new Agreement provisions. We know many of you have questions regarding how this affects you.
The President of each SUNY campus now has the discretion to designate, on an annual basis, specific positions as eligible for on-call pay and/or recall pay. Human Resources notified UUP, in a December 9, 2013 Labor Management meeting that Tom Schwarz has not yet made his first annual determination. Under the Agreement, he has one year to do so.
Until the list is created, and your position is included, and you are provided 30 days’ notice, you are NOT supposed to be required to be on-call or subject to recall. Employees who are on-call are “waiting to work.” The employee’s movement is restricted; they are available for immediate recall and are prepared to return to duty within a reasonable amount of time.
If you are directed to respond to on-call contacts, please do so. We do not want you to refuse a directive, and complying with such a directive will not waive your right to challenge the lack of appropriate on-call compensation. Please let us know right away, if you receive such a directive. Please also keep track of all of the on-call hours you worked as a result.
The new Agreement expands eligibility for on-call and UUP expects the SUNY Purchase administration to avail itself of this new provision where appropriate.
We are aware that currently there are a few different categories of on-call treatment:
Some employees may have been told that they are required as part of their job to be on-call and respond to after-hours calls (for example in facilities, campus life, IT or res. life). If this is the case any evidence you can provide, such as schedules, rosters, inclusion of these duties in your performance program and any other written or email documentation would be important.
If your supervisor requires you to respond when called or implies that you are required to respond, or holds it against you if you don’t take after hours calls, we need to know about it.
Some areas use a call list, which means everyone on the list should be available to respond, but there is no requirement to respond.
There is no grey area, such as “use your best efforts to respond;” either you are required to respond or you are not. If the President decides to make you eligible for on-call/recall compensation you will then be required to respond to calls.
If you are listed as recall eligible, if you “return to work” as a result of receiving an on-call contact, you are entitled to a half a day’s pay at time and one-half. Returning to work is performing work. In certain positions, this can be done without returning to your physical location.
The terms stated above are in effect now. Should you be told anything to the contrary by your supervisor, please let myself, Connie Lobur (UUP Chapter President), Jon Esser (UUP Grievance Chair) or Bill Capowski (NYSUT Labor Relations Specialist—wcapowsk@nysutmail.org) know.
Sincerely,
John Taylor
Vice President for Professionals
UUP Purchase Chapter
PS – To discuss this matter with you directly, and to share further information, we warmly invite you to an on-call workshop on January 10th at Noon in the Red Room.
