2/13/25 Weekly Email

Hi all, 

I have a few reminders and then another UAEA overview. If you want to review the UAEA details at a later date you can find it on our website’s Q+A page. Please also don’t forget that all of these emails are archived on this hidden webpage. 

First, February Member’s Meeting. As a final reminder, Tempe City Manager Rosa Inchausti will be the guest at our February 20th Member’s Meeting. Several Tempe Council members have also said that they will be present. Please make sure you sign up to attend at this link prior to Tuesday, February 18th at 5PM (this link includes the option virtual signups). Please also make sure you submit questions to Rosa in advance at this link. Thank you to the members who have submitted questions since last week’s email - the survey is still open if anyone wishes to submit multiple questions. 

Second, Roadwork. I mentioned some ongoing construction work in last week’s email. Thank you to the members who sent me a link with more information. If you want to know which roads around Tempe will be closed in the coming weeks, check out this map as well. 

Third, President’s Day. Monday, February 17th, is a federal holiday. Please don’t come to work unless you’re scheduled. Thank you to the employees who keep things running on City holidays - your work is seen and appreciated. 

With that out of the way I want to return to my UAEA overviews I started a few weeks back. There’s still a lot more information to cover about our operations - if you have specific topics you’d like me to cover, please reach out. With that in mind…let’s start UAEA201!

What is a MOU?

A MOU is a “Memorandum of Understanding.” It is essentially a legal contract between the City of Tempe and UAEA, promising certain rights and privileges to the Tempe staff we represent. The Tempe Personnel Rules offer similar protections but many of the policies within it are suggestions and not requirements. A MOU has actual legal weight - it offers us a process for resolving potential breaches of employee rights and getting restitution if needed. You can find the most recent copy of our MOU on this page. 

Why do the different employee groups have different MOUs?

Different employee groups have different needs and focus on different things in negotiations. Certain employee groups also have greater negotiation power - Police and Fire, for instance, are groups that have 98-100% membership among the employees they represent. For comparison, TSA has about 33% membership and UAEA has about 40% membership. If the Tempe Officer Association’s negotiators say their employees want a particular perk, it is coming from the entire Police department - in comparison, UAEA is often asking for perks and benefits that only a percentage of the City may feel strongly about. 

Can a MOU be modified?

Yes. There is a comprehensive process for MOU modification outlined in the Tempe City Charter. This is known as the “MOU Negotiations” and it is an opportunity for UAEA to make the case to Tempe HR and Management that certain changes to pay, cost-of-living adjustments, employee rights, and benefits are needed. While we rarely get everything we want, this is an opportunity to highlight employee priorities - we often find that the City tries to create new initiatives down the road after we discuss them in a formal negotiation.

Why don’t we modify the MOU more frequently?

We would love the ability to open the MOU whenever we want to, but our contract language (and the City Charter) specifies that it can only be reopened between September and November of each year. Even then, certain topics like pay are locked in every 5 years so the City can properly budget longterm. UAEA might be able to secure shorter negotiation terms in the future but the likeliest scenario is that we might not be able to secure as high of an annual COLA or couldn’t guarantee it for our members past a year. We’re not opposed to changing the existing process, but we would need a good reason to disrupt what, until now, has been a process with guaranteed outcomes. 

What is a Grievance?

A Grievance is a formal accusation by an employee or an employee association that there has been some violation of employee rights by a supervisor, manager, department, or HR. These violations may be of state or federal law, the City's Personnel Rules, or the MOUs of different employee associations. Individual employees may file Grievances by themselves but UAEA members can get the assistance of both our board and our attorney to write Grievances. 

How frequently does UAEA file Grievances?

It depends. In the last few years UAEA has averaged between 6 and 10 Grievances per year. We usually reserve Grievances for serious cases - a Grievance is a specialized tool and should be utilized only when necessary. Most violations of policy are not malicious and don’t need to be addressed with Grievances. The vast majority of contract violations are mistakes or misunderstandings of the contract language and can be addressed with a simple conversation. Using Grievances to address these would both prolong the time it takes to resolve the issue and unnecessarily harm our working relationships. That said, we’re more than happy to use Grievances if there is a longterm issue we’ve been unable to resolve through normal means or if there appears to be a contract violation that needs to be immediately resolved. 

That’s all the information I have for now. I’ll return to this topic in a few weeks with some more information on UAEA’s structure and bylaws, including some details on what each member of the UAEA board does. 

Thanks for a great week all!