Dear CASE Member:
We have heard from hundreds of you since last week regarding the Executive Order mandating that all state employees return to the office a minimum of four days per week. As you have no doubt seen in numerous media reports, the CASE Board of Directors believes this order not only violates our MOU but also will inevitably and needlessly cost taxpayers money. Ordering CASE members back to the office will require the State to obtain new office space to house our members, when the State has spent the last five years intentionally downsizing its real estate footprint in order to save costs. We have already heard from members in many departments that even under the current 2-days-per-week mandate, there is a shortage of office space. Moreover, forcing an increase in commutes will increase traffic, further degrade California’s already failing roadways, and drive-up greenhouse gas emissions, making life worse for all Californians. And of course, it will needlessly hurt our members, forcing them to dramatically change their work-life balance, and incur real economic costs to pay for transportation and other associated costs, when our members are already severely underpaid.
What Is CASE Doing About This Madness?
You have probably heard that other bargaining units have filed PERB actions. Some of you have urged CASE to consider a lawsuit against the Executive Order. The CASE Board of Directors is meeting on a near daily basis to develop the most effective approach to attacking this latest assault by Governor Newsom on the State workforce. As a union of legal professionals, each of you understands that it is imperative that we make a calculated decision as to how best to attack this order, so that we can have the best chance of success. No attorney – and certainly not a union of attorneys, administrative law judges, deputy labor commissioners and hearing officers – would want to pursue a course of action without maximizing the likelihood of a successful outcome; indeed, it would be imprudent to do so.
The CASE Board of Directors has taken several immediate actions. First, this issue has become front and center at the ongoing collective bargaining that has been underway since February. Second, CASE has requested to meet and confer with CalHR, as expressly contemplated by the Executive Order, and we will likely be meeting with them within a week. CASE will share the results of that meeting with members as soon as they are available. Third, members will soon be receiving detailed instructions as to how they can best assist CASE in positioning their individualized facts and circumstances at their department for upcoming action by CASE. Finally, CASE will be engaging with the departments that have decided to follow the Governor’s Directive instead of following what they previously determined to be an acceptable hybrid schedule. For many departments, that was only two in-office days. CASE also joined with other unions yesterday to protest this Executive Order at locations around the state.
Keep in mind that CASE has been the only union in the entire state to grieve and arbitrate the RTO mandate. While the arbitration decisions to date have not been favorable, we believe the new RTO mandate is even more indefensible than the previous one, given the fact that our members have proven to be effective and productive ever since the onset of the pandemic. Other unions do not have as favorable telework language in their MOU, and some of those MOUs do not even allow the telework issue to be arbitrated by a neutral third party – CalHR is the final authority. We plan to pursue every advantage that we have, in every forum in which we can make a colorable claim and therefore a successful outcome, to challenge this latest assault on our hard-working attorneys, judges, deputy labor commissioners and hearing officers.
We value your membership and support and encourage you to send any feedback to info@calattorneys.org.
Sincerely,
The CASE Board of Directors