January/February Labor Views 

     Service awards to members of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners for the months of January and February were presented to: 

     Kenneth Deus    30 yrs.

     Sandy Lebitz   30 yrs.

     William Powers 30 yrs.

     Maria Corazzelli            25 yrs.

     Susan King              25 yrs.

     Bernadette Repetti 25 yrs.

Congratulations!     I am extending overdue congratulations to our apprentices who completed the program late last year.  The following union members took advantage of the training offered:  Trisha Grimshaw, Jayson Vaz, Robert Nuckles, Tyler King, David Trehy, and Daniel Madore.  

 ROAD JOBS:    Every time a new job comes up, we have to poll our current employees first and then repoll all laid off carpenters from the top of the list down. Any carpenter who is currently employed had the opportunity to fill one of the positions on the Norfolk, VA road job.  (That was the EWA package.) Since current employees couldn’t fill the number of positions available, we had to go to the list of laid off people.  A new job in Norfolk came up in January for the SRA53 boat.   Again, our active employees had the option to fill that job.  We were ten people short of filling the positions so the Company again had to ask laid off carpenters to do the work.  When we need to use people off of the laid off list to fill positions, we start at the top of that list and work down each time a new job opens up.  Hopefully, more road work will become available, and we can keep people working. Also, the Union is being told that the Company will probably be asking laid off people to come back to work in the shipyard sometime in February. 

OVERTIME:  Now that the availability of overtime is limited, the Union is keeping a close eye on everybody’s weekly overtime hours.  Our members need to understand that a lot of our employees get what is called a “deviation code.”  Deviation code means that people with special qualifications have the ability to work more overtime hours than somebody who does not have the same qualifications.  We have talked with Mr. Castro about qualifying more people so that every carpenter has roughly the same opportunity to work the same amount of overtime.  I believe that overtime hours should not be monopolized by a small number of people while the majority of carpenters earn less than carpenters who get a deviation code for overtime.