What Are The "Top Ten" Contract Articles?

As we prepare for contract bargaining, let's start taking a deeper look at our contract.The contract between AFSCME Local 328 and OHSU is a document of about 150 pages, including appendices, letters of agreement and memoranda of understanding. It’s a lot of reading. The core of the contract has 28 articles.Below is a list of the ten most important contract articles. While there are other extremely important articles not on this list, such as Article 15 – Insurance Benefits, some articles have a more immediate impact on your work life than others. Our union is highlighting these 10 articles because they most affect your day-to-day working conditions. We recommend you read them.Listed in order of their appearance in the contract, the top ten articles of our contract are:

• Article 7 – Hours Of Work: Types of work schedules, schedule changes, reporting pay, rest and meal periods, on-call, shift trades, cleanup time, inclement weather.
• Article 8 – Compensation: Pay schedule, pay increases, merit pay, bonuses, travel pay and expenses, pay upon upward or downward reclassification.
• Article 9 – Overtime and Premium Pay: Overtime, calculation of overtime, call-back pay, changes in reporting time, pay for holiday work.
• Article 11 – Holidays: List of holidays, holiday pay, holiday work schedules
• Article 12 – Vacations: Vacation accrual rates, vacation bid/scheduling process, voluntary cash-out of vacation time.
• Article 13 – Sick Leave: Sick-leave accrual rates, use of sick leave, doctor’s notes, reasonable grounds, restoration of sick leave, effect on retirement.
• Article 18 – Filling of Vacancies: Job bids, job postings, internal preference, training positions, OHSU’s right to assign work and change duties.
• Article 19 – Layoff: Order of layoffs, placement and recall rights, geographical limitations.
• Article 23 – Discipline and Discharge: Progressive discipline, right to notice of investigative meeting, right to representation, right to just cause for discipline.
• Article 24 – Grievances and Arbitration: Grievance process, timelines, selection of arbitrators.

Over the next couple of weeks we will be posting a more detailed look at each of these articles. Use the comment section to leave feedback and suggestions about the articles.