We kept hearing from WPEA members that their rights were being violated when they requested to use their Personal Leave. We investigated and found they were right! We filed a grievance and as a result

47 WPEA bargaining unit members at YVC got 220 hours of leave back!

HR argued a Personal Leave day was equivalent to 8 hours of leave and was making WPEA members use additional leave to cover their time off on days they were scheduled to work over 8 hours. As you know, ctcLink tracks an employee’s leave in hours, not shifts, so converting three (3) Personal Leave days to hours in ctcLink was HR’s way of making things easier for themselves, at your expense. The WPEA contract clearly states Personal Leave is meant to cover three (3) full shifts of work, whether the shift is a 5-hour shift or 10 hours, the employee gets one shift off per Personal Leave day. Article 12.9 – Personal Leave

After repeated attempts to informally resolve the issue, WPEA filed a grievance on behalf of all YVC employees covered by the WPEA-Yakima Valley College Collective Bargaining Agreement. YVC has agreed to the remedy we requested in the grievance and has done an audit of leave over the past two years. Anyone who was owed leave should have received an email from YVC Human Resources with the type and quantity of leave that was returned to your leave balance.

If you did not receive an email from HR correcting your leave balance, but believe you are owed hours:

Contact HR and/or your union rep Judy Lumm at 509 480-2590.