We're UFCW 3000 - When We Fight, We win

On Tuesday, October 27, our union Bargaining Team representing the newly-organized clinic workers in the MultiCare Mary Bridge Therapies group met with management for our first official session of negotiations towards our first union contract!

On Wednesday, October 21, and Thursday, October 22, our union Bargaining Team met with Management for our seventh and eighth contract negotiation sessions this cycle.
 
As with our back-to-back sessions in July and September, we left these two days disappointed by Management’s overall pace at the bargaining table;

Our collective actions over the last two weeks have paid off in this bargaining session, and we are encouraged by the results! Management arrived prepared to engage and met with our team early in the day, replying to several outstanding proposals. Throughout the course of the day, we reached sixteen tentative agreements. One of these was a major breakthrough in our economic proposals – agreeing to the definitions of full time and part time employees. Thank you to our Contract Action Team members who pulled a lot of information to support the need for these definitions.

The union met with LabCorp on Wednesday, October 28, and once again received unacceptable, disrespectful proposals. LabCorp offers minimal, below-market wage increases, resists giving reasonable notice of outsourcing, and wants to strip away our rights and gain total power to change your health insurance whenever it chooses. The company blames upcoming Medicare reimbursement cuts for refusing to move closer to our proposals, but we are skeptical: LabCorp is thriving financially, its stock price is rising, and CEO Adam Schechter received $18,399,913 in compensation last year.

Grocery executives are working to grab every penny from their workers and members of our communities. Every contract negotiation is an opportunity to fight for what we deserve and work to steer the grocery industry back on track, to focus on what matters: delivering quality customer service and great products to feed our neighbors.

In our last contract negotiations, our union won the largest wage increases that we’ve seen, secured a transition to the stable our union health plan through the UFCW Spokane healthcare Trust, and ensured funding to keep our pension plan dependable for retirement. Our NE Oregon contracts recently expired, and our union is prioritizing a new contract that builds upon our previous wins.

After four long days of bargaining with the Employer and countless hours of preparation, our Bargaining Team reached a Tentative Agreement (TA) that we are excited to bring back to our members!

While our initial bargaining sessions were largely positive and relatively low stakes, we now have reached the meat and potato economic proposals that our unit cares about most. This is often the most challenging stage of bargaining – especially when bargaining a first contract. An example from today: in response to our extensively researched wage proposal, the company stated "we don't want to change how we do things" without further discussion.

As 2,500 UFCW 3000 members at MultiCare continue preparations for contract bargaining to begin early next year, there are several upcoming opportunities to gather, discuss and contribute. First off, a big thanks to all who completed the bargaining surveys during August and September. That information will be crucial in our assessing priorities before bargaining.