Brothers and Sisters, we have come to the end of our first Collective Bargaining session. I am excited to share with you the great strides we have made to improve working conditions. Before you read the contract, I urge you to read what I am about to tell you so that there are no misunderstandings about what we have already accomplished and what we intend to still accomplish through fact finding.
So here are the cliff notes of what we have done to improve your protections and compensation. Sick notes can be requested under two conditions; if you call off more than 3 days in a row or if you sustain a non-industrial injury.(broken limb, torn ACL, or something that would prevent you from performing essential work functions) If you are questioned about anything other than to ascertain safety or incident details, that you feel could result in misconduct, you have the right to have a representative present. If you are receiving disciplinary or investigative paperwork, you have the right to have a representative present. If you are under investigation, before you are interrogated by the IG's office, you or your representative have the right to review all evidence in the possession of the investigator. Seniority will be based on your date of hire as a correctional officer or forensic, regardless of rank.(this includes SC/O's, no more date of promotion) You can request discipline to be removed from your file within certain timelines, and they have to remove it. We have written into the contract the required method of hiring mandatory overtime. This also includes the addition of a standby list for volunteers who will be paid standby pay. We have reduced the amount of exempt or excluded posts to 15%. Holidays will be paid at double time and a half and there is an extra holiday, Juneteenth. Shift differential will now be paid for any officer working swing shift. FTO positions and special assignment pay, up to 10% additional pay. Muster pay is now asserted in the contract and can be taken as comp time. The uniform allowance will be increased to $2,020 per year, on two separate checks in September and March. You will now be able to carry forward 480 hours of annual leave each year. You will be able to cash out up to 80 hours per year of annual leave once you are in excess of 200 hours. Annual leave availability list will be available for staff to view at all times. Graveyard officers will no longer get short changed holiday pay if they only work part of the holiday, so if you work a portion of the holiday, you will be compensated for one full shift of holiday pay. If you work both portions of the holiday on graveyard, you still only get one shift of holiday pay. You will be allowed to call in up to the start of your shift. If you call in after the start of your shift, you will be AWOL for the period up to your call in, but not after the point that you call in. If you are involved in a traumatic incident, you will be offered a referral to EAP, and if you elect to participate, you will be given 5 days of administrative leave to attend appointments. The grievance procedure has been re-written. For the camp officers where the camp is going to be shut down, you will receive $5,000 and 40 hours of administrative leave to complete a move to a location where you transfer to another NDOC institution or facility.
I have already noticed that there are language issues and omissions that need correction with the contract, to include all facilities with 15 or more employees will perform a shift bid. There are some discrepancies with this version of the contract. The compensation does not include what was discussed today, where the state said while we are pursuing fact finding for additional salary, you will receive the 2 grade increase that the state has already agreed to. We fully intend on pursuing fact finding in order to get you more than the full 22% discussed today. There is also the matter of the additional 2% increase through an arbitration award from the 2021 contract that is not included. That alone would give you all a 24% increase on July 1st, 2023. It is the position of the bargaining team that this is not enough to bring us into closer to the competing agencies around Nevada. We will continue to fight for you to get you the raises you all deserve. There will be a Q & A session tomorrow from 11 am to 3 pm for any of you who have questions on the contract. I will post the contract on the bottom of the home page for all to review.