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Term Employees' Hired In Atlanta |
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Friday, 06 January 2006 |
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We have received many calls regarding the hiring of term employees in the Atlanta Metro area. We have investigated this issue and have found, the company has staffed 26 positions that include: Comm Techs, CSDG Designers, and SOA’s. The decision to fill these positions with term employees’ without a recall was decided solely by the company. The terms hired are former AT&T employees that the Company solicited and picked to staff these positions. According to the contract, term employees are not permanent; they are hired for a period of one to three years and may be terminated on or before the completion of the project or task that they have been hired for.
The Union approves of the Company hiring bargaining unit employees’ back to regular full time employment, but we would have liked to see the company go through the recall process which would have consisted of a hiring of laid off employees in seniority order. Currently, the contract language in Article 24 gives the company the ability to hire term employees for one to three years in the event of an emergency or to meet peek load or other temporary situations. If a term employee is on the recall list, they will not lose their recall eligibility during the tenure of their term employment. The company has told us that this hiring is for peek load coverage, which means that the company laid off too many people in the first place and now their fix for this is to hire terms instead of permanent recalled employees. The terms will be eligible for full coverage of the contract, as described in definitions in Article 3.3 of the contract. The terms will also receive full representation of the Union and are eligible for Union membership during the term of their employment. The staffing of these jobs and future hiring will be closely monitored by your Union, but we lack the language to influence the way term jobs are staffed. If you have any questions regarding the staffing of these positions, you can contact the company with your inquiries. It must be remembered that although the current contract allows the company to staff these positions with term employees, the Union has consistently advocated that the company staff all positions using the recall process which calls for a rehiring in seniority order. We will continue to advocate this position and under the terms of our contract, the company must still fill any permanent position through the recall process while there is a recall in effect. |
