Following up on the collective bargaining meeting of May 26: first draft of union's proposals

Find below a first draft of the proposals the union sent today to Lionbridge's attorney following the collective bargaining meeting of May 26.

New location for the lab

Here is the message received from Susan Gillespie in our email box today at 1.47 PM right after I emailed their attorney after our stand up meeting.

"In response to changing business requirements of our client, the ACO team will move from the current Advanta space to a facility near the existing Lionbridge Factoria office in Bellevue. The team will move on June 9th and 10^th with the intent of resuming full operational capacity on Monday June 13th.  

Our new work location will be:

Sterling Plaza II
3545 Factoria Blvd SE Suite 200
Bellevue, WA 98006

Lionbridge's 2016 first quarter

Read here Rory Cowan's presentation. What he says about Microsoft's contracts:
Microsoft, our largest client, remained stable year-on-year as we expected. And we won a number of new programs in growth segments such as Xbox and others. So, we’re expecting some very good growth in Q2 versus Q1. So, the account feels affirm this year just as we thought it would. 

The collective bargaining meeting will be on Thursday May 26 at 3.30 pm

The collective bargaining meeting will be on Thursday 

May 26 at 3.30 pm

East Shore Unitarian Church

12700 SE 32nd Street

Bellevue, WA 98005-4317

Let us know if you want to attend.

Lionbridge is proposing Thursday May 26 or Tuesday May 31 for the next collective bargaining meeting

Let us know the date you prefer and if you intend to attend.
As mentioned in the previous post, the meeting starts at around 3.30 PM and takes place at

East Shore Unitarian Church

12700 SE 32nd Street

Bellevue, WA 98005-4317

It's a five minutes drive from the office. We'll keep you posted. The more people attending, the better.  

Collective bargaining meeting in the planning stage

We just received today a positive email from Tim O'Connell in response to our request for a collective bargaining meeting. Lionbridge is going to propose a few dates and we'll see what works for us. 
The meetings start at 3.30 PM and take place at

East Shore Unitarian Church

12700 SE 32nd Street

Bellevue, WA 98005-4317

It's a five minutes drive from the office. We'll keep you posted. The more people attending, the better. 

Can you believe it? Since January 1, 2015 Lionbridge supposedly offered regular status (with corresponding benefits) to temporary workers having worked 9 months on a project

Since January 1, 2015 Lionbridge offered regular status (with corresponding benefits) to temporary workers having worked nine months on a project!
This is what I think I understood from an answer given by the HR Susan Gillespie during a questions and answers meeting attended by a dozen of Tier 1s that took place today around 12.30. 

In a written answer to a question asked by Paul Shattuck (thank you Paul for asking) during a previous Q&A meeting she stated: "employees are converted from temporary status to regular employees after nine months of employment. That policy was put in place in January 2015, in response to the Federal Affordable Care Act. Again, though, Lionbridge was not allowed to unilaterally extend that policy to you and your peers since we were in bargaining with the union".

What prevented Lionbridge to incorporate this new policy into the first contract proposal they gave us in February 2015 instead of not offering any PTO and not offering in any way to modify the temporary status after nine months? What prevented Lionbridge to incorporate this within the final proposal they made in November 2015?
All the Tier 1s who patiently attended very frustrating collective bargaining meetings where Lionbridge systematically refused any change in this direction are certainly highly shocked by such an announcement and attitude. The contract that was rejected by a majority of the Tier1s in November did not include any such proposal while its presence would probably have changed the vote outcome. Making  such a proposal as soon as January 2015 would have drastically changed the process and the Tier1s could have immediately gained one whole year of benefits.
Susan Gillespie keeps trying to put the responsibility of the lack of implementation of this new policy on the union but of course only Lionbridge knew about this change and they never mentioned it as a possibility, quite the contrary.
As for now, we are immediately going to contact Lionbridge to renew the bargaining process about implementing this policy for our lab.
We hope a date can be set as soon as possible and that many of you will be able to attend.
Let us know of your comments and questions.
Take care
PS: Susan Gillespie mentioned the 2015 US Handbook that contained the new policy: we never saw this 2015 handbook while we did see handbooks in 2013 and 2014. Let us know if you had seen it.

Nota: The PTO allocated by Lionbridge to full time "regular' employees is as follow:
Up to 1 year: 14 days / 112 hours
1-2 years:      16 days /  128 hours
2-5 years:      20 days /  160 hours
5+ years:       25 days /  200 hours

The benefits provided by Lionbridge to ful ltime "regular" employees are as follows:
Company Life & Diasability: Yes
PTO: Yes 
Paid holidays: Yes
severance: Yes
401k: Yes
EAP: Yes
Breavement: Yes 
Jury Duty: Yes
LOA: Yes