Bargaining Update: June 14
Town Halls and Green Out the Board: Don’t forget to join us for one of our town halls tomorrow: 12 – 1 p.m. and 6 – 7 p.m. in Mac Hall rm. 1162 or via Webex (meeting link was emailed on Monday). We also have our March on the Boss event on Thursday. Details can be found here.
Our teams met with the state mediator again today. We spent some time in the afternoon reviewing our members’ bargaining priorities, as well as what our team hopes to see from OHSU, with her.
Tentative Agreements: We reached agreement on almost a dozen sections of the contract, including the following. The full set of TAs can be viewed here.
6.8.5 Removal of Materials: Managers will be advised to inform employees during their annual reviews that certain disciplinary materials may be removed from their personnel file if there has been no additional discipline within a specified time.
13.3.3 Notification of Sick Leave Usage: Employees now have some protections against onerous requirements for calling in sick.
15.1.2 Relief Employee (benefits eligibility): Employees who change from full- or part-time status to relief will now be able to maintain their insurance benefits during a stability period after the change.
20.1.4 Termination During Probationary Period: If an employee’s probation is extended (other than due to protected leave), their manager must conduct a coaching meeting and notify the employee of the reason for the extension.
MOU #UX4 Downward Adjustment: Employees whose pay rate has exceeded the maximum of their pay range due to letters of agreement or incentives will not be subject to a downward wage adjustment for the duration of the contract.
MOU #UX7 Employee Designations: OHSU will begin designating employees as critical-function/essential workers, hospital-unit workers and workers in units with seven-day operations.
Local 328 Counterproposals: We made counterproposals for the majority of the outstanding proposals that were in our court, including the following.
5.UX4 Preceptor: We reproposed our initial definition of a preceptor, rejecting a much more complex definition from OHSU (in which “preceptor” would also have been changed to “clinical trainer.”)
5.UX12 Remote Work: Last week OHSU proposed changing “telework” to “remote work,” and added definitions for fully vs. hybrid remote work and OHSU vs. remote work site. We countered with some minor changes to this language.
8.4 Market-Based Adjustments: Changes to this section of our contract include ensuring that employees retain their original anniversary date after an upward adjustment and that if an employee falls out of their pay-range maximum, previous years spent at the maximum will count toward the longevity rate.
22.3 Attendance at Educational and Training Events: Our team has proposed language ensuring that employees may be reimbursed for expenses related to required education and training.
Waivers: OHSU agreed to withdraw its proposal to move the voluntary waivers of daily overtime and shift differentials from our contract to an online process, contingent on adding a new voluntary waiver of weekend differential. We countered with language stating that the weekend differential may only be waived by employees who periodically work on weekends for flexibility, not those who are regularly scheduled to work on the weekend.
OHSU made the following counterproposals, which our team responded to at the end of the day:
Article 2 Package: OHSU’s counter made significant movement on this article, which addresses staff and steward access, release time for stewards and officers, how many stewards we can have, etc. We responded with additional movement and hope that we’re close to agreement on this language.
13.2 Attendance Recognition: OHSU countered with changes, but continues to maintain the 2:1 SIK-to-VAC conversion. We accepted most of those changes, but reproposed a 1:1 conversion.
21.2.1 Implementation of New Classifications: OHSU made movement on this language. We responded by asking for 90 days of negotiation before OHSU could implement new classifications or revisions to existing classifications (instead of OHSU’s proposed eight weeks).
The full set of our counters can be viewed here.
In the coming days we’ll be posting more information about the proposals that are still on the table, including side-by-side comparisons showing where each party stands, and will share some themes from our recent bargaining survey.