Lionbridge to implement immediately their PTO program

After the rejection of the tentative collective agreement, Lionbridge has offered to implement immediately their proposition relative to paid time off (PTO). The union has decided no to oppose it. That means that people who have been working in the lab for more than 9 months will get now the 2,5 days of PTO corresponding to the months of November and December, provided they keep working full time during these 2 months. People who have not worked for 9 months will not be eligible for PTO until they have been working for 9 months.

The union is not satisfied with this proposal but there is no reason to oppose it as it is not linked to a contract and it will at least and at last provide something. We are not satisfied with this proposal because we think waiting 9 months to start accruing PTO is too restrictive and we think Lionbridge should have taken into account the time spent working full time before November 2015: many of the Tier1s have been working for years in the Windows App Certification Center without any PTO. It would have been fair to give all people with at least one year of presence, 15 days right away, to recognize the value of their hard work. Instead the accruing will only start now, denying any PTO value to years of work.

This PTO is the result of the lobbying the union did on Microsoft. We still believe Microsoft can improve its very low ‘at least 15 days of PTO’ standard. This will not happen if we don’t ask for it. One element in this asking is the charge we filed with NLRB to have Microsoft considered as joint employer and having them at the bargaining table where we could ask for the same treatment they give their blue badge employees. This is an ongoing process that could take a while.

A second element is having the employees express what they want after the rejection of the tentative agreement. That’s why we have drafted a 20 question anonymous survey, so that the Tier1s can tell what they want. if you are not on our email listserve, you'll receive very soon a letter with a copy of this survey. You can also answer the survey via the internet: you only need to send us a personal email address so we can email you the necessary link to access the survey that is available via Google forms.