8/30 Mediation Update: Impasse Declared
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Today was our 11th day of mediation with OHSU. In the morning, several members of each team met in a subcommittee to discuss additional work, overtime and ANI. At 3:15 p.m., OHSU responded to our last proposal.
When presenting the employer’s proposal, the management team reported that they had taken our last proposal to their steering committee and that this counterproposal is about the best they can do. A summary of OHSU’s proposal can be viewed here. Key points are:
Across-the-Board Raises: An updated wage-proposal comparison calculator can be viewed here.
Year 1: 4% second full pay period after ratification, 2% first full pay period after Jan. 1, 2023
Year 2: 4% first full pay period after July 1, 2023
Year 3: 3% first full pay period after July 1, 2024
Sick Leave: No increase. (OHSU reminded our team of the availability of COVID leave.)
Vacation:
1 through 5 years of service: 2 additional days
> 5 through 10 years of service: 1 additional day
> 10 years of service: 0 additional days
Overtime Compensation: Current contract language (no additional compensation for mandatory OT).
Preceptor Pay: Two additional classifications added to the most recent list of eligible classifications. (We’ll post this list soon.)
Salaried On-Call Stipend: Social workers and chaplains who are on call for more than three weeks per calendar quarter will receive a stipend of $50 per eight-hour day of call over that amount.
Per OHSU, an additional $16 million* has been added to the employer’s proposal since Friday, Aug. 26. While we appreciate the employer’s movement, we feel that OHSU hasn’t heard our members’ concerns and priorities and continues to propose solutions that address the wrong issues or don’t do enough to address the right issues. Recruiting new employees is important — so is retaining existing employees. Offering COVID leave that’s only available in limited circumstances and could be taken away at any time isn’t helpful for a workforce that is sicker than it was three years ago. Refusing to recognize all of the classifications with employees who precept shows a disconnect from the work our represented employees are actually doing.
After extended discussion, the Local 328 bargaining team notified OHSU at 5:20 p.m. that we were declaring impasse and why. Our Aug. 26 proposal is our last, best, final offer.
Both teams will now turn our work toward costing our last, best, final offers, which will need to be presented to each other and to the Oregon Employment Relations Board by the end of the day on Wednesday, Sept. 7; this information will be posted on the ERB website. [Ed. Note: We indicated Sept. 6 earlier, but we won’t be notifying the ERB of the impasse until tomorrow.] At that point the mandatory 30-day cooling-off period will begin. Some mediation will take place during the cooling-off period. If our bargaining team determines that withholding our labor is necessary to get our members a good contract, a strike could potentially start as soon as the cooling-off period ends (after our union gives the employer the required 10-day notice).
In the meantime, please join us for our online bargaining forum on Thursday, Sept. 1, from 12 – 1:30 p.m. Register here.
*During their presentation, management stated that our teams’ proposals are $116 million apart. We were later provided with a costing document that included a different total cost for our proposal than we had been told during the live presentation. This document also included $8 million for a specific differential that we hadn’t proposed.