Post-Negotiation Report on Overtime rate, hours of work & Shift Premiums
(Union-The United Metalworkers of Canada)

Post-negotiation (Overtime rate, hours of work & Shift premium)
During negotiation, we came across few issues that we did not include in our original planning book. The clause of overtime took a major part of our discussion time. Wages, overtime and benefits were the only clauses where we had to make calculations and required the company’s financial standing. Some of the errors that we made in the overtime clause were: * As compared to the company’s financial standing, our opening position was quite smaller in values. We were unsure, that if it would be possible to inflate the values while negotiating. We increased the values of our overtime and shift premium rates while bargaining. Our new rates fell in place in terms of the budget was not going higher than the financial standing of the management. Our target position was similar to the management’s fallback. * In our original planning book, we did not consider the issue of how the overtime employees will be assigned. Management wanted to be deciding on who will be assigned for overtime hours, however, we wanted it to be entirely voluntary. As our opening position, we would keep overtime as being voluntary based and management cannot force or assign any worker without asking. * We also included switching shifts option in our new planning book. We think it is necessary as it can avoid future disruptions in the working schedule. Also, we discussed on matters such as how many employees will be working in each of the shifts. How the employees will be assigned was an important point to be talked about, as our calculations and comparison of company’s net worth between current and demanded values, were done on the basis of our demanded numbers. We disagreed upon job rotation,