San Diego Global Settlement 2021
On December 8, 2021, I signed a settlement agreement with the San Diego Superior Court which resolved three matters pending against them:
1. An Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) suit filed with the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) in which charges were filed against the court for harassing one of our San Diego stewards.
- To settle this ULP, LA-CE-39-1, the court agreed to remove a letter of warning issued to our steward from the personnel file, as stewards are protected when participating in concerted activities (union work).
2. An Arbitration alleging that the court failed to pay interpreters the 25% premium for performing Video Remote Interpreting (VRI).
- The court will pay $15,000 to settle CFIR4SD2002, a grievance in which the Union asserted that assignments performed remotely on Microsoft Teams beginning in the spring of 2020 constituted VRI assignments and therefore, were entitled to the 25% stipend that was practically forced on Region 4 during the last round of negotiations. All unit members who reported assignments to the local steward team before the deadline indicated in the agreement (December 7th) will soon receive compensation for all assignments performed as VRI.
3. A Grievance filed for implementation of a new policy – how overtime is handled going into the noon hour at Central court – without first advising the Union of the change and giving an opportunity to meet and confer on the impacts.
- The Court will not implement the new policy until the parties have finished the meet and confer in good faith, to be scheduled no later than January 28, 2022.
Since this executive board and I came into office, we made it a priority to dedicate special focus on courts that had been consistently breaking the MOU and been abusive to our union members in the past – San Diego, Fresno, Orange, among others. A commitment was made by this board and San Diego’s stewards to change the dynamic, uphold the MOU, and grow union activism. The result is that much progress has been made in communicating with management on an equal footing, with mutual respect, to resolve issues before rising to the level of formal grievances. When a court knows that we are willing to grieve their MOU transgressions, we are then in a better position to negotiate new MOU proposals in the next round. It shows our commitment to oblige the court’s compliance with our agreements.
The San Diego steward team led by Silvia San Martín, with Gemma Yosick and more recently Vanessa Bonilla, has filed a total of nine grievances since 2019. I have made it my personal endeavor to support this team, and others, by giving my mentorship and the expertise of our union’s legal team. Working together as a team, all of these have been either resolved through a settlement agreement or withdrawn because the court rectified the issue during the process, thereby successfully resolving all pending complaints against San Diego Superior Court without conceding the union’s interpretation of any terms found in the MOU.
In conclusion, what we can learn from this experience and the example of our stewards in San Diego, and elsewhere, when we work together as a team, we can accomplish our goals and protect our labor interests, taking agency over our shared interpreter profession. Each court group of members is a vital component not only in their regional MOU bargaining unit, but throughout the state; union members can effectively achieve beneficial results in their own court, but throughout the state. We are interconnected such that the victories in one place supports similar achievements elsewhere in California. Our San Diego steward team, as well as stewards throughout our state, can take pride in being strong and holding the line during this pandemic. Well done, all of you!
In unity,
Michael Ferreira President
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