A Message from President Pete Piciulo
Last April OCA announced that our contractually negotiated 2% raise for 2020 was being deferred. They led us to believe it would be paid in this fiscal year so, in this time of financial crisis, we understood it would be prudent to wait. In July we acted accordingly to protect our members’ rights and filed a grievance.
In October, OCA again announced they would be deferring the raise. We notified them that if we had to go to arbitration, in addition to retroactive payments, we would be seeking interest.
In December, based on OCA’s refusal to respond to the grievance, we filed for arbitration. We are seeking interest at the statutory rate of 9% in addition to retroactive payments. OCA has continued to stall and has been dragging it’s feet on selecting an arbitrator.
Today we were notified that OCA has opted to continue to defer that raise. It’s apparent that OCA is just kicking the can down the road on this and has no plan to pay this debt. Our concern is that we might not see this raise for years. Rest assured we will not be complacent ever and we are demanding an expeditious resolution to this matter.
In Unity,
Peter A. Piciulo
President