BRS Local 20 Minutes from Ft. Madison
The next regular meeting of BRS Local 20 will be Saturday June 9, 2012 at 8:30 a.m. at The Best Western Prairie Inn, 300 S. Soangetaha Rd. Galesburg, IL. Reservations may be made by calling 309-343-7151. Following are brief minutes from our last meeting held April 21, 2012 in Ft. Madison, IA.
The meeting opened at 9:00 with 11 members and 1 guest present. A treasury balance of $ 38,469.81 in checking and c.d.’s in the amount of $ 21,433.71 was reported. We then voted in 8 new members after reading of bills and minutes was approved.
Joe Baker discussed a member not giving a statement to the company over an incident. He discussed the importance of the proper way of giving statements and stressed we can’t be insubordinate, but we can be short and concise in what we say. It was determined that if a statement is requested, contact a local chairman. Joe also discussed hours of service reports are being compared to timeroll records, there is a new program out that will red flag a discrepancy between the times.
John Bitters had only 1 investigation to report on, concerning some testing allegedly not being done in the proper time frame.
Don Levell had no grievances to report on. He did talk about back pay issues for 2 men, as well as our General Committee’s quarterly report, and the scrutiny on overtime pay.
Joe Lokken reported on expense account delay, 2 crew members with hours of service issues, and 4 crew members being investigated for being out of their authority limits. This is still an ongoing issue, we can’t be losing our focus on this. Joe also reported there are going to be 10 more new hires coming on in June. If the gang guys could keep me posted it would be greatly appreciated.
General Chairman Mike Dake was present and discussed the lump sum payments, and the 52 cents per hour increase to be rolled into the base rate for monthly rated employees, as well as all other maintainers and test men coming in July. He also discussed the extra 50 cents for signalmen that will start in July, that amount is slated to end Dec. 31, 2015 at the end of the contracting agreement. There is a 4.3% raise starting July 1 as well. Mike also discussed the upcoming healthcare changes. There are many changes as we all know, please do your homework on this. Mike also discussed the extreme importance of proper testing procedures after any type of crossing work, big brother is watching. He also mentioned there are more meetings scheduled on DOT medical qualifications for CDL drivers.
Nominations for this year’s elections were closed, and everyone should have their ballots by now. As mentioned, ballots will be accepted by mail through July 7, 2012, or you can bring them to the Galesburg meeting and hand deliver it if you wish. It looks like we will have Grand Lodge Vice President-West, Mark Ciurej at the meeting, and possibly our general committee chairman Mike Dake there also. If you have questions, these are the guys to talk to.
Effective July 1, Grand Lodge and General Committee will be increasing the per capita tax we pay them per member, so that means our dues are increasing. Per our by-laws we pay 10 hours signalman rate per quarter in dues. Of that 10 hours, 4.8 hours goes to Grand Lodge, 4 hours to our General Committee, and our local keeps the remaining 1.2 hours. We still have the dues refund item in our by-laws, however the amount we have to reach at a quarters’ end to have the refund increases to $ 103,593.00. So, effective July 1 our dues will be $ 273.70 per quarter, or $ 91.24 per month. We had some discussion if Ft. Madison if it would be feasible to possibly lower the amount of hours per quarter we pay per the by-laws. Hopefully I can have more information at the next meeting, until I get the next per capita tax bill from Grand Lodge it is hard to estimate how much money our local needs to operate, we definitely don’t want to run short.
Again, I would like to remind everyone if you would like to receive these notices on your home e-mail please let me know. It would also be a big help to our General Committee Secretary Treasurer to receive the quarterly letter by e-mail. If you wish, contact Ken Strickland, his e-mail is brskes@att.net. The newsletter he sends is a huge expense for the general committee. I hope to see a lot of you at the next meeting in Galesburg, it should be a good one.
Fraternally,
Ed Leeson
Recording Financial Secretary
BRS Local 20
Brslocal20@comcast.net
309-202-1260
