Union Organizing Starts Today! Thank You IBEW.

Fellow Bridge Tender,

It’s clear we’re not being treated fairly and over the last 5 months we tried reasoning with ISS and ICA in an effort to convince them to be fair (www.bestbridge.blogspot.com). They resist and we won't be stonewalled any longer. It’s clear the only way to change their policy is to force them into collective bargaining. If enough of us agree to be represented by a union we can improve our wages, benefits and working conditions. The greater the percentage represented - the greater our bargaining leverage. Please consider the following and then we’ll ask you to sign a card.

It's WAGE THEFT! Your organizing committee was formed after discovering ISS Bridge Tender wages ($8.05-$10.75/hr) and benefits (0 – 5 paid holidays, 0 - 2 weeks vacation, etc.) varied widely across Florida. Further research showed the highest wages and benefits were paid only after union bargaining. We found Jacksonville (Electrical Workers) and Delray Beach (Operating Engineers) received wages and benefits far better than ours. We also found that the Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics reports our job description should pay $19.04/hr in Florida. Clearly, ISS and ICA are pocketing more than their fair share of our pay.

A Union Response. After our committee tried to appeal to reason for five months we learned that a union’s knowledge, experience and legal resources can make the difference between success and failure. Management must negotiate in good faith with an authorized union representative or be forced into mandatory arbitration, it’s the law. So, we interviewed the Electrical Workers, Operating Engineers and Steel Workers, five locals in all. We chose the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) as our best fit. Your committee members already signed cards appointing the IBEW as our personal representatives. Both IBEW negotiators and some of your fellow bridge tenders will be part of the negotiating team. We urge you to sign the card that forces ISS to bargain with us in good faith.

Sign Up. Signing an authorization card is NOT a vote to join the union. The cards only appoint the IBEW as our representative, to bargain on our behalf (yep, even before we’re members). The cards are secret and ISS will never see who signed. A strong showing will force ISS to negotiate a fair contract - one you’ll vote on before it’s approved. If a contract doesn’t increase your take home pay and improve your benefits you won’t approve it and if you want to revoke your card at any time you can. We don’t have anything to lose but the IBEW does and we must be fair to them.

It's Guaranteed. IBEW won’t ask us to join their union or pay dues until after a contract is approved by us, one that puts more money in our pockets, gives us paid holidays, vacation and sick time. Then… join we must, because we’re only as strong as the percentage represented. Fair play also demands we join to repay the IBEW for providing all our organizing, negotiating and legal resources (see: "Not One Red Cent"). Don’t cheat yourself, don’t cheat your fellow bridge tenders, don’t cheat the IBEW and don’t sign a card if you don’t plan to pay dues (far far less than what you’ll gain). If you want a higher standard of living – sign a card! It's the surest way to improve our quality of life, the more who sign the more sure it becomes.

Please print and pass this to fellow tenders who don't have web access. The sooner a majority sign - the sooner the negotiating process can start. But, be prepared for this to take time as there are about 120 of us and we want to talk to you all. Be patient, remain committed to improving our pay, benefits, safety and working conditions. ISS is wrong and refuses to do the right thing voluntarily. It's our responsibility to respond to their wage theft. History shows they must be forced into respecting us. With your patience and unbending support we can't be stopped. Spread the word.

Your Organizing Committee

exploitingtenders@gmail.com

www.bestbridge.blogspot.com

Collective Bargaining - We won't be stopped.

Neither ISS nor ICA responded favorably to our five month long appeal to reason. It's clear that only collective bargaining will change our circumstances. Individual employees have appealed in the past and ISS has either ignored them or responded with a token response. Only under union pressure has there ever been significant change. The higher % represented – the greater that change. Your support is very important and we want to count you in the % represented.

ISS recently responded with a characteristic token response. In their lowest paid District One they raised pay 25¢ (see letter below). We’ll take it as a demonstration of good faith and encourage management to continue in that direction while reminding them that $19.04/hr is the mean hourly pay for our job description in Florida as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In FDOT District Four the union negotiated a contract giving ISS bridge tenders four (4) paid holidays. In FDOT District Two a different union negotiated a contract giving ISS bridge tenders five (5) paid holidays. In compaarison State workers receive seven (7) and Federal workers get nine (9). But, in FDOT Districts One and Seven we get zero (0) paid holidays and are paid at a subsistence level. Only organizing and negotiating can stop wage and benefit theft at the hands of ISS & ICA.

But it’s far more than pay and benefits. We wish to improve bridge safety, enhance operational efficiency and insure we're protected while on the job. We need indemnification from lawsuits that could be filed against us personally due to job related issues. We want to be free to report risks without fear of reprisal. We need to be free from ISS pressure not to rock the ICA boat (a conflict of interest that FDOT needs to fix). Management must respect our right to organize, collectively bargain under the law and STOP interfering with our rights. It's more than doing the right thing, it's the law.

Bridge Tenders: Stand up for your rights. Don't surrender literature to supervisors, don't tell them about it. Pass it from hand to hand, don't leave it on the bridge. If asked to surrender anything refuse. It's your property and it's your protected right to organize. We're now in communication with Districts One, Two, Four and Seven and thank our fellow bridge tenders for their solidarity. Please share this web address with ALL bridge tenders — help us spread the word.

ISS: Stop your exploitation! Stop your profiteering! Stop your wage theft! We object to your capricious policies. Your attempts to isolate and compartmentalize are no longer effective, dependence on ignorance is lost to the web. Stop alienating us. Face facts and do the right thing.

ICA: Stop protecting ISS (it's them, right?). You know right from wrong. You can't hide, get your head out of the sand. Intervene or accept the guilt by association that outrages and polarizes your workforce. We want to work together and you need to earn our cooperation with your support.

FDOT: We have alerted you to the travesties occurring under your blanket Agreements with ICA/ISS/C&S. We ask you audit the payment path to your operators and then stop the unjustifiable disparity between today's wage and the clearly published wages prevailing in our locality. It's more than following the letter of the law, it's about fair play. Give us the protection we deserve in your next round of Agreements. You deserve a closer relationship with us, we want to work closer together.

11. First Request for FDOT Intervention

 

Bridge Operators Organizing Committee

FDOT Districts 1 & 7

www.exploitingtenders@gmail.com

August 26, 2013

Florida Department of Transportation

Office of Maintenance

ATTN. Mr. Tim Latner, Director

605 Suwannee Street

Tallahassee, FL 32399

Dear Sir,

When choosing to outsource bridge operators we doubt your department envisioned the rampant profiteering and exploitation that ensues under ICA and their subcontractor ISS. We, the bridge tenders of Districts 1 & 7 suffer under their abhorrent and capricious employment policies. The following disparities, bully tactics and conflicts of interest threaten the safe and reliable operation of your bridges. We ask for your kind intervention.

Wages and benefits cause us great personal pain. Please refer to the latest Department of Labor (DOL) Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report to see the mean wage for bridge and lock tenders in Florida reported at $19.04/hr. Our gross pay in District One is $8.25/hr and in Seven it’s $8.75/hr. In at least two other previously unionized Districts ISS pays up to $10.75/hr with benefits that vary according to the union contract.  In Districts 1 & 7 we receive no holidays, sick days or personal days - virtually no benefits at all.

History shows only when bridge tenders collectively bargain with ISS is there meaningful change. Our attempt to gain standing and collectively bargain was met with the unlawful confiscation of our petition when ISS demonstrated a blatant lack of respect for our rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Our offers of concessions and appeals to reason are stonewalled. We non-union-represented operators are employed “at will”, a relationship that creates fear of dismissal and demands our anonymity. ICA was notified and shows no concern.  It’s documented since 04/01/13 at: www.bestbridge.blogspot.com .

We are filing charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for unfair labor action. After asking the Employment Standards Administration’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) for an opinion, we believe FDOT-ICA-ISS are in violation of the McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act (SCA). We believe the spirit of the Davis Bacon Act (DBA) should prevail Statewide “subcontractors must pay no less than locally prevailing wages and fringe benefits in the area” and ask this protection against exploitation and profiteering at the hands of contractors and subcontractors is included in your next Agreement.

You too suffer from these middlemen with their inherent conflict of interest. Because ISS is dependent upon ICA for the contracting of and payment for their services they are obliged to maintain a cordial (preferential) relationship with their contractor. That obligation impedes our open reporting by ISS employees to FDOT inspectors. We are encouraged not to volunteer anything to FDOT inspectors and Drawbridge Malfunction Reports are completed only with supervisor approval. Please require that operators are employed under the “for cause” (currently “at will”) relationship necessary to speak freely and openly, making us full partners in the safe and reliable operation of your bridges.

We ask you to disclose the wage and benefit sum factored into your District 1 & 7 Blanket Services Agreements for operator services and if it includes a 3% annual increase. If not an explicit sum please give the parameters you use to measure, define and evaluate those costs.  While questioning the fundamental social morality of the State outsourcing our job, we recognize middlemen are entitled to costs plus fair profit. We are also entitled to what is fair including “indemnification from operator errors or omissions” in the next Agreement.

In summary, we respectfully ask you to:

1.              Audit ICA and ISS to uncover and stop profiteering.

2.              Insist operators are employed under a “for cause” relationship.

3.              Protect operators with indemnification against errors and omissions.

4.              Require no less than prevailing local wages and benefits be paid to operators.

5.              Disclose the basis on which you calculate and pay for operator remuneration.

It’s your right and your duty to stop this exploitation and end relationships that engender silence. Help us earn a modest living wage with benefits and protect your operators so we may better protect the safety of the public and the reliable operation of your bridges.

Sincerely,

The Organizing Committee

www.exploitingtenders@gmail.com

P.S. We regret the temporary need for anonymity, to be lifted once our charges are filed with the NLRB after which we may speak more openly and directly. Meanwhile please respond to our committee via email.

A 25¢ raise. Really? - A letter from a bridge tender.

Dear Jake,

I cannot seriously believe that they (ISS and/or "the Powers That Be") think that this move will keep us pacified. What an insult! A $.25/hour SURPRISE RAISE (since most of the tenders in our district have NO idea *what* has transpired since Mr. Hartman demanded that the initial 8-page document from our group be removed from all bridges)? Is this what they feel will make up for the disparity between what the South Florida bridge tenders have been earning ($10.50) since December, 2012?

I believe that the majority of our fellow workers would be GREATLY excited to hear that the most recent information from the Department of Labor Statistics informs us that  this group is now RIGHTFULLY asking for $19.04 per hour. And yet ISS thinks that $.25/hour will keep us quiet? I think not; our raise to $8.25 doesn't even come close! To me, this only further fans the flames of my anger. Especially since ISS once again showed thoughtlessness in their decisions.

When they gave us "all" $.25 more per hour, they omitted that "equal pay raise" for the employees of Blackburn Point Road Bridge. Blackburn Point Bridge has always been a "special" bridge, which is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. It is a one-lane swing bridge located on Blackburn Point Road in Sarasota County. This bridge requires that tenders go outside, in all kinds of weather, to operate the bridge from the center of the span. For that extra hazardous duty, the tenders on that bridge (used to) get $1.00 more per hour than the rest of the tenders working for our company in our area. But, for some reason, when EVERYONE ELSE (who has worked for the company for more than one year) got $.25/hour more, these folks on Blackburn Point Bridge did not get anything.

So now I am not only angry for myself, as an employee of the state-wide Florida bridge tenders' system run by ISS, but more humanely, as a fellow member of this district of which most of us got a measly raise and a select few did not. WHAT IS UP WITH THAT? You talk about disparity ... wow.

A Sunshine State Bridge Tender

(who does not feel very sunny...)