On Wednesday, August 13, MGEC met with MnDOT senior leadership in our quarterly meet-and-confer meeting to discuss items of interest. The first agenda item related to the seniority lists that are regularly updated and published internally in the agency.
Originally, the lists were published by classification seniority; employees could see where they stood in their job class against others in the same class across the whole state. At some point in the last several years, however, MnDOT began publishing the lists by “seniority unit”, essentially seniority by district, not statewide. MGEC’s concern is that the change could affect how employee rights are protected under the various sections of the contract on layoffs, bumping, job claiming, and others.
MnDOT leadership advised us that there is no such intention and that the contract rights are under no threat. The lists are generated with data queries that relate to sections of the AFSCME contract that MGEC does not have. They will explore data reporting options that are more relevant for our contract.