Court Reporter Vacation Policy

At UPE’s request, UPE and Sacramento Superior Court met and conferred over the Court Reporter Vacation Policy. UPE proposed to remove the 7-day cancellation deadline for vacation. Right now, if Court Reporters do not cancel a vacation more than 7 days before the first scheduled day off, they are required to take the vacation. As everyone knows, sometimes life intervenes and some need to cancel a vacation at the last minute. Court reporters are the only units in the Court Office Technical Unit with a cancellation deadline. This means workers are sometimes forced to take time off they did not want. In addition, sometimes Reporters are assigned cases before their vacation that will require readback. When this happens, many reporters would prefer to cancel their vacation than rush to prepare the transcript for readback or work on their vacation.

To help correct these issues, UPE proposed eliminating the cancellation deadline. The Court pushed back stating that when there is not a cancellation deadline and vacation is cancelled at the last minute it can be challenging to process and notify, the person first denied. Under the policy workers are supposed to be given 48 hours’ notice of an approved vacation. According to the Court, the cancellation deadline helps ensure the Court provides this notice. The Court proposed reducing the deadline to 72 hours. UPE countered with 48 hours since this is the notification deadline. The Court agreed to trial this change for 6 months. Notice will be sent out to staff on September 23, 2024.

TOGETHER WE ARE STRONG!