“Everything Else”
With almost 200 items on our bargaining team’s proposal tracker, it’s a challenge to keep up with everything that our union has brought to OHSU during this year’s negotiations. Tuesday, April 26, was the last day for new proposals, so now that we’re in the phase where we’re trading counterproposals, it’s a great time to go back over some of our proposals you may have missed. In this post, we’re going to focus on some of our proposals that we believe have the potential to make a huge difference in the lives of our members, our families and our communities.
Paid Family Leave: We proposed a memorandum of understanding for an employer-paid family-leave benefit of up to 12 weeks, to be used to care for a family member or to be used by parents of new biological, adoptive or foster children; we also proposed an additional eight weeks of paid leave for employees who have given birth.
Mental Health Leave: We proposed up to 16 hours of paid mental-health leave per year.
Bereavement Leave: We proposed the establishment of a bank of 56-hour paid bereavement-leave hours and other improvements to the bereavement-language language.
Catastrophic Event/Emergency Leave: We proposed up to 80 hours of leave to be used in the case of catastrophic events or public emergencies such as wildfires, extreme heat, earthquakes, etc.
Holidays: We proposed four new holidays:
Juneteenth (floating holiday)
Indigenous Peoples’ Day (floating holiday)
Veterans Day
Day after Thanksgiving
Protection from Harassment, Discrimination and Violence: We presented a group of proposals that would define the types of behaviors that are unacceptable and would obligate OHSU to do everything within its power to protect employees from being targeted by anyone who works for, contracts with or visits OHSU.
Telework: We rejected OHSU’s proposal that would allow the employer to require fully remote teleworkers to return to work on campus with 28 days’ notice. We proposed a new section on telework, which includes assistance with setting up one’s home office, a monthly differential, reimbursement of travel expenses when a teleworker must periodically visit campus and much more. We also proposed an MOU that would allow current and future bargaining-unit employees to live and work outside of Oregon and Washington, offer an employer-funded FSA as an alternative to OHSU’s health-insurance coverage and establish better resources for employees re: income tax, workers’ compensation and more. Read all of our telework proposals here.
Salaried Employees: We proposed a number of improvements to Appendix A, including reducing the number of non-applicable contract provisions and adding language re: shift differentials, overtime, on-call and anniversary increases. We also proposed a process for employees to move from salaried status to hourly. Read our proposal in full here.
Overtime: We’ve proposed increasing the premium pay for mandatory overtime to triple time and added other language aimed at disincentivizing OHSU’s use of mandatory overtime to address chronic understaffing. We also proposed changes to flex employment designed to help alleviate the need for overtime by better incentivizing flex staff to take shifts that may otherwise be difficult to fill. The full proposal can be read here.
Longevity Rate: Employees currently receive a 3% longevity raise after being at the top of their pay scale for five consecutive years; we proposed that the longevity raise would be applied every five years, which would reward employee loyalty to OHSU.
On-Call Pay: We’ve proposed offering on-call pay for every four hours of assigned on-call duty, rather than for every six hours. We also proposed a number of other improvements, including offering on-call relief at 24 hours and giving employees the option to refuse on-call assignments exceeding 96 hours per pay period.
What do you think of these proposals? Do you have a favorite or two? Do you have a favorite non-economic proposal we didn’t mention here? Let us know in the comments!
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