Mediation Update: August 19 - 20
Have You Voted in Our Strike Vote Yet?
We need as many members as possible to vote yes. The teams are still very far apart on economic issues, and our bargaining team must have a strike authorization in hand in order to put pressure on OHSU to settle a good contract for our members.
If you haven’t voted yet, you have until 5 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 25 to do so. If you’ve already voted: thank you! Please encourage your coworkers to vote as well. Click here for the voting link and resources to help you make your decision.
Summary of the Day: Our union’s team started our day reviewing possible tentative agreements, putting finishing touches on a confidential economic supposal and preparing some counterproposals. We met with OHSU mid-morning for a moving presentation from one of our salaried chaplains, who spoke about burnout, understaffing and excessive on-call coverage. This was our full team’s only face-to-face meeting with OHSU’s team during the session. We met separately with the mediator later in the morning to explain our supposal, which she then shared with OHSU. We also presented two counterproposals (see below).
In the late afternoon, the mediator met with us to discuss two counterproposals from OHSU — an MOU re: workforce development (which we later reached tentative agreement on) and a response to our DEI package. While we’re getting closer to agreement on new contract language re: discrimination and harassment, our team is concerned that some of OHSU’s verbiage would give the employer leeway to not act on complaints. OHSU finally agreed to formalize giving us Juneteenth as a floating holiday and withdrew its proposal to take away President’s Day, but the management team is holding firm on not giving us Indigenous Peoples’ Day as a floating holiday. OHSU’s DEI proposal can be viewed here.
After OHSU presented these counterproposals, our team waited into the evening for the employer to respond to our supposal. Shortly after 9 p.m., at OHSU’s request, a few members of our team met with the mediator and a few members of the management team in a sidebar. At around 11:00 p.m., about 12 hours after we delivered our supposal to OHSU, our full team finally received OHSU’s confidential economic supposal in response.
Our team spent a significant amount of time discussing OHSU’s supposal and our next steps. We ultimately opted to prepare a second confidential economic supposal, in the interest of avoiding impasse — this was presented to OHSU shortly before we wrapped up at 2:30 a.m. today.
Due to the nature of late-stage mediation, many of the teams’ counterproposals are in the form of confidential supposals. These supposals typically cover multiple outstanding topics and are a non-binding way for the teams to signify what movement they might be willing to make in certain areas if certain conditions are meant. Unfortunately, this means that we’re unable to share details with our members. We can share that, even after these 16 hours of mediation, the teams remain very far apart on economic issues. We’ve scheduled another 12 hours of mediation for Monday, Aug. 22, to make a final push to reach a settlement and avoid impasse.
AFSCME Counterproposals: We presented the following counterproposals:
Discipline and Grievance Package: The teams have agreed on all of the language in this package except for a small bit of verbiage regarding the length of investigation into complaints of harassment and discrimination.
MOU #7 Services for Employees Whose Primary Language is Not English: We’re also close to agreement on this language. Items still in play include the establishment of a translations/interpreting joint committee and the development of an O2 page containing translated information on how to access information about key OHSU departments.
Tentative Agreements: The teams reached the following tentative agreements today:
6.UX2 Remote Work: This new section of the contract addresses remote-work requests, standard technology and equipment for remote workers and the use of personal devices. It establishes that remote workers may use paid time to drop off malfunctioning equipment at OHSU or to pick up new or repaired equipment. It also acknowledges that the parties will need to bargain OHSU’s next draft policy re: out-of-state work once it’s ready. Other language in the remote-work package was also agreed to.
7.11 Clean-up Time: Language was added to specify the circumstances when employees may use paid time to change out of soiled clothing.
MOU re: Exit Interviews: This new section of the contract requires OHSU, within one year of contract ratification, to offer exit interviews to bargaining-unit employees and report the responses — if the employee has opted in — to Local 328 on a quarterly basis. (Our union intends to also implement our own exit-interview program in the future.)
MOU re: AFSCME Inclusion in Workforce Development Initiatives or Plans: With this new language, the parties agree to meet twice yearly re: (a) approaching the Oregon legislature regarding the funding of workforce-development initiatives and plans to support underrepresented OHSU employees and (b) marketing these initiatives to underserved employees. (As part of this TA, we withdrew our earlier training-trust proposal.)