General Discussions

A note from GC Edington concerning FMLA and PS days;

Brothers and Sisters,

Over the past several weeks we’ve received several reports of Union Pacific violating the FMLA law. Kansas State Legislative Director Ty Dragoo has been in contact with the DOL and discussed UPs FMLA violations. The DOL requested we create a central point to gather reports, so they are not coming from multiple sources. The attached questionnaire and QR code will allow members to report an FMLA violation without Union Pacific having knowledge of the complaint. Once we receive the information, Brother Dragoo will forward it to the DOL as a complaint.

Please forward this information to all your UP members and encourage them to report any violations. Filling out the form on the members portal is the preferred method. If a member is unable to utilize the member portal (QR Code), they can email the attached questionnaire to ty@smartks.org

We are also working on time claim templates members can utilize when they are forced to take a PS day in conjunction with an FMLA day. We will have those templates out early next week. Our PS agreement is different than other crafts as we specified PS will be used ahead of non-compensated days off, not concurrent with them. This issue will most likely be resolved through arbitration because it’s a dispute over the language contained in the agreement.

Q&A’s:

Q: Will Union Pacific have access to the complaint?

A: Union Pacific will not have access to the info, this info will only be forwarded to the DOL by our office as a complaint

Q: Why are GC-953 and the Kansas State Board collecting that data?

A: When speaking to the DOL, they asked if we could keep the information in one place and not receive info from multiple sources. We will be that one source for the entire UP system.

Fraternally,

Luke Edington

General Chairman