Have you been paid enough?

March 17, 2010

In a March 11th decision Grievance Settlement Board (GSB) Vice-Chair Randi Abramsky has requested that all court reporters who provided transcription work since July 2003 submit a claim for all of the hours that you’ve worked and not been paid appropriately.  As a result of this claim, the Ministry of the Attorney General may actually owe you money.

In 2006, Abramsky issued a decision that said the production of transcripts was bargaining unit work. Therefore, the provisions of the OPS collective agreement applies to that work, such as overtime, fair wage rates, pension entitlement, and benefits.

OPSEU has 45 days to collect this information to submit to the GSB. In order to make a claim at the GSB, we need information on the work you provided from July 2003 onward. For example: Did you work overtime? Did you work on weekends or holidays? If you were unclassified in 2003, did you work enough extra hours to be converted to classified status? We will need this information on a yearly basis since a number of different collective agreements have applied during this period of time.

Please fill out the attached Court Reporters’ Contact Form and we will have someone contact you within the next three weeks to gather further details of your transcript work history. Please click on the link for the form below, print out the form, and fax to (416) 448-7429. You only have until April 16, 2010 to submit your form to be included in our demands for retroactive pay.

If you still have contact with Court Reporters who are no longer employed in the OPS (e.g. retired, terminated) and you know that they were employed from July 2003 to present, please ask them to collect this information on their work and fill out the form as well.

If you have any questions, please call OPSEU Head Office and leave a message at 1-866-433-4633 or (416) 443-8888 ext. 7424. We also have a dedicated email address, courtreporters@opseu.org .

Click HERE to download the Court Reporters’ Contact Form