Sept. 15 Vaccine Bargaining Update
Local 328 met with OHSU again on Wednesday, Sept. 14, to continue bargaining on the vaccine mandate; we provided our counterproposals on a number of policy areas. Below is a summary of our discussion.
Side-Effects Protection
OHSU proposed that employees experiencing significant side effects from the vaccine would be eligible to use OHSU’s COVID paid sick leave (COV1) for up to three days from onset of symptoms. We pushed back, arguing that since side effects may last longer than three days, the COV1 hours should remain available to employees throughout the duration of their symptoms. We also noted that if symptoms last beyond the available COV1 hours, employees can file a workers’ compensation claim. Furthermore, we added language for injury/illness exacerbated by the vaccine and provided resources for employees to apply for federal vaccine injury/illness benefits through the U.S. Health Resources and Service Administration.
Protection of Vaccination Information
OHSU states that the vaccination status of each employee will be confidential and can only be accessed by the employee’s direct supervisor, unit manager and other personnel if needed. We maintain that only Occupational Health and Human Resources should have access to this information. OHSU clarified that supervisors need to know when employees are not compliant with the vaccine policy to understand the impact on operations after the Oct. 18 deadline.
Protected Leave
We recommend that employees currently on continuous protected leave, such as FMLA, be given an additional 60 days upon their return to work to become fully vaccinated. We made this recommendation to ensure that employees do not carry out employer-mandated tasks while on leave and to give employees enough time to become fully vaccinated. OHSU clarified that the mandate does not allow employees who are unvaccinated to work. With that said, more discussion on how employees can use their accruals to cover this time is underway.
Exceptions
We continue to argue that OHSU is asking far beyond what is necessary to make a determination of whether a religious exception should or should not be approved. The OHA form asks the questions necessary to make that call; for the employer to request additional information without reasonable cause places an undue burden on the employee and discourages them from applying for the exception. We disagree with OHSU’s interest in receiving the contact information of an employee’s religious leader, since the employer does not have the right to make a judgment call on someone’s personal belief system. Furthermore, OHSU should not be allowed to ask for an employee’s medical records, since a physician's note should suffice.
The exception forms will be turned off in Enterprise Health on Tuesday, Sept. 21. OHSU has put together a committee to review these requests. We dispute the need for this committee as it is only being used to determine exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine (a committee like this isn’t used to determine exemptions for other vaccines). This again shows that OHSU is going beyond what is reasonably necessary to make a determination.
Vaccine Selection
We added language to our proposal that states that an employee has the right to choose which of the current vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson) they would like to receive. If the employee’s preferred vaccine is not available at an OHSU facility, the employee would be allowed to travel to a non-OHSU site of their choosing to receive the vaccine.