Dear Colleagues,
As we continue to deal with the great variety of issues we face during the Coronavirus Crisis period, we have achieved another success that I wanted to share with you. We have reached agreement with GOER and SUNY to extend the time for expiration of holiday compensatory time earned for work on the Memorial Day 2019 and July 4th 2019 holidays. The Memorandum of Agreement reflecting this agreement is attached.
Article 23.5 of the State/UUP Agreement provides that holiday compensatory time which calendar and college year employees earn when they work on holidays normally must be used within one year of when it was earned. If not used, it is forfeited at the end of the year.. This MOA extends the forfeiture date for holiday comp time earned in May and July 2019 to December 31, 2020. This gives us an additional five to seven months to use the time we’ve earned.
It’s obviously very timely, as the agreement will provide employees who have been unable to use this holiday compensatory time because of recent COVID 19 response efforts with additional time to use this leave. This is primarily (although not exclusively) a potential benefit for our members at the hospitals who have had leave plans, and in some cases previously approved leave requests, disrupted by COVID 19 response efforts.
Please distribute this as widely as possible your members. If you have any questions, please email me.
Thanks and take care,
Fred Kowal
UUP Statewide President