Highlights from the 2006-2009 Contract

June 26, 2006

CWA Rep. Al Piker reports that Local 7270 has reached a tentative agreement with Citizens (Frontier) -Minnesota. The details are:

New Titles
Sales and Service Technicians (All technicians including SCC)

Classified as:
Operations
      Sales and Service Technician
      Facility Assignor
      Service Assurance Representative (Dispatch, Assignment)

Sales and Service Specialist (Existing repair reps and call center reps)

Classified as:
Call Center
Sales and Service Specialist
Service Assurance Representative (Repair) (until duties merged into Sales and Service Specialist position)

Article 3

Joint Operations and Call Center Quarterly Employee/Management meetings. Agenda will be set by mutual agreement.
No Strike - No Lockout (new language)

Article 5

Company has established "Flexible Part Time Employees" job description. These are part time employees that are hired with the expection that their schedule will be flexible and permit them from time to time to work hours beyond their normally scheduled shift or other non-scheduled hours including split shifts.

(Call Center Only)
Article 6 - Working Hours, Sunday Differential and Overtime

Split shifts - Employees hired after January 1, 2007, can be scheduled for split shifts up to 4 weeks a year.
Overnight shifts will not be implemented until sufficient staffing. Existing employees will not be scheduled before 6 AM or after 11 PM.
Employees working 11 PM - 6 AM will get a $1.00 per hour differential for those hours of their shift that falls within these hours.
Removal of 7 AM to 7 PM language - this will not become a 7 x 24 operation.
Four-day work weeks with at least two, possibly three consecutive days off. These shifts will be bid by seniority. Holiday weeks revert back to 5 day workweeks. PTO will be 10 hours for one day of PTO.
Sunday Differential - Sundays will continue to be compensation at 1 1/2 times until staffing is at 150 consultants. At that point, it will go down to 1 1/4. If the staffing level drops below 150 consultants, then it will revert back to 1 1/2.
Mandatory Overtime Cap - increased from 8 hours to 10 hours in a week. Overtime language applies to full time employees only. Part time employees may be asked, or may be required to work non-scheduled hours.

(Operations Only)
Article 6 - Working Hours, Sunday Differential and Overtime

Normal shifts will be scheduled between 7 AM and 9 PM. When any portion of the shift falls from 9 PM to 7 AM there is a 10% differential (increased from 7%).
Four-day work weeks
Overtime Administration - For the sole purpose of providing equal and impartial distribution of overtime, all overtime hours offered by an employee's supervisor, the hours refused shall be posted as well as overtime hours worked on a weekly basis.
Compensated Availability - (replaces stand-by language): Pay will be $2.40 for all employees assigned to hourly coverage and 11 hours straight pay for all employees assigned on a weekly basis. The first two call-outs will be a minimum 3 hours. Beyond the second call-out, compensation will be paid for actual time worked.
Call-Outs - For employees who live outside their normal reporting district, the computation of call-out time under this section shall not include more than 30 minutes travel time from the employees home to the job and shall not include more than 30 minutes travel time from the job to the employee's home. If trouble can be cleared from home, the tech will get 3 hours straight pay.
Scheduling of Non-Selected Tours - This language shall apply to limited situations (i.e. training). The company may assign tours outside of seniority on the following basis: 0-5 years service - up to 15 weeks annually; 5-10 years service - up to 8 weeks annually; 10-20 years service - up to 6 weeks annually; and 20+ years service - up to 4 weeks annually. This is an MOA.

Article 9 - Traveling Time and Expenses

New language - When an amployee will be traveling overnight by air, the employee and the employee's supervisor will arrange mutually acceptable travel arrangements. The employee will be paid for the time consumed from when the employee leaves home to travel to the departure airport to the time the employee arrives at the hotel at the destination point, and the time consumed by the employee's trip home from the departure airport to the employee's home. Any time involved in layovers during the trip as shown in the original itinerary will be included. Any additional time due to delays or cancellations in excess of one hour over the time in the original itinerary will not be included in this paid time.
If an employee is offered public transportation for travel to work away from the employee's district, but requests and is granted permission to drive a car instead, the employee shall only be compensated for the lesser of the time spent driving the car or the time that the company would have had to pay the employee for travel time spent on the public conveyance.

Article 11 - Holidays

If a holiday occurs on a day on which the employee is not scheduled, the employee shall receive a floating holiday.
Call Center Only - In order to receive the holiday allowance, an employee must work the entire holiday shift (if scheduled) and the entire shift on which the employee is scheduled both immediately preceding and immediately following a holiday, except where, due to extenuating circumstances, the company waives this requirement.
Employees wo work on a holiday will be paid the holiday allowance for all hours worked if any portion of their shift falls on the holiday.
Operations Only - Holiday work shall be assigned on a rotating basis, using the rolling calendar insofar as practicable and serviced conditions will permit.
Time worked between 7 PM and 12 Midnight on New Year's Eve shall be paid for at double the employee's basic hourly rate.
Call Center - Holiday Bidding: Holiday bidding will be completed no later than December 15th for the following year. The bidding will begin with the most senior employee. The employee will select as many holidays as management determines are required including one alternate holiday. When a holiday shift is vacant and the company has to assign an employee to work, the assignment will be based on the alternate holiday selected in inverse seniority order. In any event, the company reserves the right to assign holiday shifts as necessary in inverse seniority order.

Article 12 - Call Center Paid Time Off

New employees who have an absence during the first three months will not be paid for days absent and will not be able to use PTO.
Effect of Leaves of Absence on Accrued PTO: Dates of the month (1st, 15th, etc.) no longer apply for PTO accrual. In order to accrue PTO for the month, you need to have worked 86 hours(which includes PTO, but excludes overtime).
PTO Selection and Cancellation: When an employee has successfuly bid for a given week of PTO and then seeks to cancel any days in that PTO week, the employee may cancel the entire week of PTO and take day-at-a-time PTO, only if the employee had to cancel the day or days due to prior unplanned absence. Otherwise, the entire week will be cancelled and the employee can request to take day-at-a-time PTO.
Starting January 1, 2007, employees will have two emergency PTO days per year.
FMLA - Employees must use up to 40 hours per year of any accrued PTO coincident with any absence from work associated with FMLA leave. The company cannot force employees to use unaccrued PTO or FMLA.

Article 12 - Operations - Paid Time Off

New hires have a chart for first year PTO allotment and are not allowed to schedule PTO until completing three full months of employment.
Effect of Leaves of Absence on Accrued PTO: Dates of the month (1st, 15th, etc.) no longer apply for PTO accrual. In order to accrue PTO for the month, you need to have worked 86 hours(which includes PTO, but excludes overtime).
Removed the option to sell a week of PTO back to the company.

PTO Use - Call Center and Operations
Employees must use up to 40 hours per year of any accrued or unaccrued but available PTO with a personal Leave of Absence.

Employees must use up to 40 hours per year of accrued PTO for military training or reserve duty except for the annual 2-week reserve training.

Article 15 - Job Vacancies and Bidding

New hires shall not be eligible for a transfer until they have performed their job for 12 months. However, where only qualified internal candidates are new hires who have not met the requirements of this paragraph, those requirements may be waived by the company.

Article 16 - Excused Absences

Time off for union business must be requested in writing and the approval must be given in writing. No more than 3 (changed from 2) employees from any one department or 4 (changed from 2) employees in total shall be allowed off at any one time unless in special cases.
New language - In addition, no more than one employee per work group shall at any one time be excused unless such other arrangements are made.

Article 20 - Termination Pay

Language clean-up. No change to intent.

Article 21 & 22 - Grievance Procedure and Arbitration Procedure

Clean-up language and new selection process for choosing an arbitrator.

Article 26 - Benefits

Premiums: Company 80%/Employee 20% - 2007 & 2008; Company 78%/Employee 22% - 2009
Increases in office co-pays, specialist visits, lab and x-rays, in-patient hospital, ER hospital, RX's.
Retiree Health Care - Current language stays in effect until December 31, 2007. Effective January 1, 2008: Employer contributions reduced to 80% (before age 65) for 25+ years of service; employer contributions reduced to 80% (after age 65) for 25+ years of service.
Provisional letter granted stating the 1998 language secured in regards to Retiree Health Care is not affected by agreeing to to this change in retiree health care premiums. The language in the letter stating that it cannot be changed unless by mutual agreement staill stands.
401(k) - Continuation of the 3% match. Also, Letter of Agreement stating that if the company is late with the 3% match into the employee's account, they will pay $5.00 per person per day for each day it is late.

Article 33 - Telephone Concession

New language says the benefit may be changed from time to time. The company will give 45 days' advance notice before making a change. Concession will coincide with the corporate plan.

Article 34 - Incentive/Commission/Award Plans

Incentives may not include awarding paid time off (such as PTO and holidays).

Call Center Forum

New forum established between the company and the union that will meet quarterly and discuss call center issues.

Memorandum of Agreement - Joint Health Care Committee

The union and the company will meet twice yearly with representatives from the corporate benefits department to try and work on health care issues. CWA Reps. may be included in the meetings.

Memorandum of Agreement - Voluntary Terminations During a Layoff

If there is an impending layoff, the company agrees to permit regular full-time employees to volunteer to terminate their employment if the employee is in the same classification as the employee slated for layoff; if the volunteer agrees to receive as a layoff allowance either the amount that would be received by most senior employees slated to be laid off of the layoff allowance the volunteer would have received based on the employee's seniority, whichever is less; the volunteer must notify the company of an interest in volunteering for the layoff within one calendar week; or the company's determination of whether to accept the volunteer will be final and shall not be subject to arbitration under the agreement.

Memorandum of Agreement - Call Center: Work-At-Home

Post bargaining, the parties will meet to discuss the establishment and implementation of a work-at-home program for the call center.

Memorandum of Agreement - 2006 Frontier Call Center Consolidation

For the term of the 2006 agreement between the parties that terminates May 31, 2009, the company will not, as a direct result of the above referenced call center consolidation initiative, either close the current Burnsville Call Center or lay-off or part-time any regular employee who held the sales and service consultant title as of May 31, 2006.

Wages

Assignments, Dispatch and Facility Assignors: June 4, 2006 - 2.75%; June 3, 2007 - 2.5%; June 1, 2008 - 2.5%.
Sales and Service Technicians: June 4, 2006 - 2.75%; June 3, 2007 - 2.5%; June 1, 2008 - 2%. In addition, Sales and Service Technicians will receive a lump sum bonus payment semi-annually, which will be 1% of the base wages for the group (depending on performance the amount will be between .75% and 1.25%). The amount will be set by the number of districts achieving the targets. These payments will begin in July 2007 and then every six months thereafter.
Out-state technicians will be brought up to the Metro pay scale. There will now be only one pay scale for all technicians.