4/16 Bargaining Session -- One Agreement, More Work
Today’s TopicsToday was a big day for both bargaining teams -- the last day on which proposals could be submitted, which meant that each team had to have its full economic package ready to go. The exchange was scheduled for 2:30 p.m.Prior to that, though, OHSU and Local 328 tackled two other issues:
- A concern raised by management regarding linking contractual seniority rights to job performance.
- A concern raised by the union about making Employee Resource Groups more accessible to bargaining-unit employees.
After an extensive sharing of interests and brainstorming around management’s issue, several potential solutions were offered. The teams spent most of the morning in discussion, but our facilitator eventually noted that the parties seemed to be moving toward positions and not converging on a solution. After both teams caucused, we agreed that our interests in this area are very different and that we were not going to come to agreement using the interest-based process . We deferred the issue to traditional bargaining to be conducted later in our negotiations.We did reach a tentative agreement on the union’s issue, concerning ERGs. The broad outline is that managers will be instructed to make a good-faith effort to release members to attend ERG meetings. Members may use their lunch period and breaks to attend ERG meetings, as well as up to one hour per month of employer-paid time. In addition, members may use their current contractually guaranteed education/training time (see contract article 22.1.1) to attend the special events, trainings and speaker presentations sponsored by ERGs. We think this is a nice win for members. The ERGs are an opportunity for everyone, not only minority/under-represented employees, to learn more about the OHSU community, to network and to engage with each other.The Economic ProposalsLocal 328 and OHSU each made extensive, comprehensive economic proposals. It is our intent to analyze OHSU’s proposals over the weekend and give our members a detailed report and summary by Wednesday, April 22. At the same time we will give you a detailed report of our own economic proposals. There will be now be no new proposals made by either side for the remainder of bargaining.Next StepsThe bargaining teams’ next steps are to finish negotiating our non-economic issues using the interest-based bargaining process.When we complete that process, we will start exchanging counter-proposals on our economic proposals. We will have lots of opportunity to hear from members about the economics before we respond to these proposals. Please tell your coworkers to look for the complete economic proposals and analysis on Wednesday!