On Wednesday, November 5th, a “meet and confer” meeting was held between senior MnDOT staff and MGEC. The goal of a meet and confer is to identify issues that affect members within a specific agency that don’t rise to the level of a solution that needs to come from the bargaining table. This meeting’s agenda included clarification on the Student Loan Reimbursement program, and discussions on concern over changes to teleworking affecting some members, and our mileage issue over reimbursements for meals while traveling.
A MGEC member reached out to us about being denied a student loan reimbursement because the employer had excluded their probation period in the counting of employment to be qualified for the program. MGEC’s concern is that the employer added a condition that affected the timing of the benefit without negotiating it. The situation worked out for this employee and they were reimbursed but we voiced our strong concern that the employer changed the effect of negotiated language without talking to us. Because the affected person was paid there isn’t a grievance, but we put the employer on notice not to modify the terms of the contract through policy.
On the mileage issue, we had a member who had participated in several multi-day, remote meetings using their personal vehicle. The employer denied mileage reimbursement requests for travel to lunch and dinner, saying those trips were personal in nature and therefore not reimbursable. We had grieved the issue all the way to arbitration, but MGEC’s advocacy wanted to respect members’ dues dollars by not paying for an expensive arbitration over an issue valued at around $6. We were hoping to announce that we wanted to not arbitrate the grievance but still address the underlying topic at the meet and confer but agency staff were unwilling to discuss it until they had permission to do so from MMB. We are working to make sure that happens and plan another meeting soon to finally get to the heart of the matter.