Bargaining Update: July 28
Thank you all for a great picket yesterday! Our bargaining team was at the table for about 32 hours over the past three days, and seeing such a strong show of support from our members — especially in the excessive heat — really meant a lot to us. We’ll share photos and a short blog post about the picket soon.
We had a very productive day of mediation with OHSU today. The teams exchanged a number of proposals, and we saw movement from the management team on some of our union’s key issues. We had some good discussions with the management team, and reached several tentative agreements that we’re very pleased with.
Our next mediation session isn’t scheduled until Friday, August 19; please note that we’re unlikely to have any announcements about across-the-board wage increases until then. The teams will continue to meet every Tuesday in the meantime, working to reach agreement on other important proposals that are still on the table.
Tentative Agreements Reached: We reached TAs on the following:
10.8 Inclement Weather Team: This differential has been increased from $10.00/hour to $12.00/hour.
10.UX5 Float Pool Department Differential: We’ve established a new differential of $1.00/hour for employees in designated float-pool-department positions.
14.1.4 Jury Service: This section of the contract now accommodates evening- and night-shift employees.
23.4 Pre-Discharge Notice: In this article, “suspended” has been replaced with “placed on administrative leave.”
Back in April, we reached a TA to continue MOU #10 Hardship Fund, through which OHSU provides Local 328 with $100,000 in each year of the contract in order to assist our represented employees struggling with housing, food and transportation security. Today OHSU offered to provide additional funding to assist our folks dealing with child-care insecurity, in exchange for our union dropping our proposal re: child-care reimbursement. We agreed to re-open this MOU and are pleased to announce that OHSU has doubled its contribution to our union’s hardship fund — the employer will now contribute $200,000 to the fund each year of the contract, half of which will be dedicated to assisting with child-care insecurity. Over the past three years, this fund has been so helpful to our members in need, and we’re glad that OHSU values this partnership with our union. (If you’re a member facing financial hardship, you can find out more information about the hardship fund, as well as apply for assistance, here.)
OHSU Counterproposals: The management team proposed the following today:
Remote-Work Package: As part of a package that re-presented its June remote-work package, OHSU has withdrawn its proposal that would have allowed the employer to recall fully remote employees back to campus with 28 days’ notice. The employer also agreed to provide standard equipment (in addition to standard technology) to remote workers. (Ed. Note: There have been no other substantive changes to the rest of OHSU’s remote-work proposals.)
Call Package: OHSU also presented a counterproposal addressing several call-related areas of the contract.
Economic Package: The management team also presented a small economic package that includes the following:
MOU re: Base Rate: OHSU is proposing to increase the minimum wage on the Local 328 compensation chart to $18/hour immediately after the across-the-board increases take effect. (The current minimum wage is $15/hour.)
Recognition Bonus: OHSU has doubled the amount of the recognition bonus they offered previously and made some additional changes to this proposal.
10.1 Shift Differential: OHSU has agreed to our proposal to increase evening differential to 7% or $1.50/hour, whichever is greater, and night differential to 12.5% or $3.00/hour, whichever is greater, and made some additional movement.
In addition, the OHSU team committed to countering our DEI and anti-harassment/-discrimination package next week, expressing understanding that it’s extremely important to our union to have this language in our contract, rather than have the Covington committees attempt to address it.
AFSCME Counterproposals: Our union’s team proposed a time-off package addressing the following sections of the contract:
11.2 Holiday Compensation: Part-time employees will now be entitled to prorated HOL hours based on the greater of their FTE or their average hours worked during the 13 pay periods prior to the holiday. We agreed to withdraw our initial request re: compensation for work-unit holiday closures, but are adding improved language to this section of the contract.
12.1. Accrual of Vacation Time: We reproposed shortening the vacation-accrual tiers, which will allow employees to accrue VAC hours more quickly.
12.4.3 Submission & Granting of Vacation & Holiday Time Off Requests: We agreed to OHSU’s small clarification to this language. OHSU has withdrawn its proposed changes, which our union felt would have weakened seniority.
13.1 Accrual of Sick Leave: We continue to request an additional 40 SIK hours.
14.1.9 Mental Health Leave: We previously proposed withdrawing this proposal.
14.2.4 Bereavement Leave: We’re now proposing 36 hours of paid bereavement leave each year instead of a bank of paid leave that would accrue up to 40 hours each year (depending on the previous year’s usage). In this counterproposal, any of the 36 hours that go unused will expire on January 1 of the following year.
Our team moved on some of the above proposals in order to hold firm on our proposals re: faster accruals of vacation time and additional sick-leave hours. Having additional VAC and SIK hours available will help our members cover some of the other time-off needs that are part of this package.
Since we didn’t wrap up today’s mediation session until about 7:30 p.m., not all of the contract-language PDFs were available at the time of publication of this blog post — the PDFs for OHSU’s counterproposals will be added to the post as soon as possible. (Ed. Note: These additional PDFs have now been added.)