On Wednesday, November 18, the Bargaining Team met with Providence. During negotiations the Hospital, rejected closed shop union membership language and continues to reject other union security language.

It is important that we obtain strong union security language so we can enforce the collective bargaining agreement and empower the unit. If we agreed to the Hospital’s proposals around union security and membership, it would result in having no union members and would deteriorate the collective bargaining agreement. The RN unit had weak membership language in past contracts and this resulted in the Hospital offering lower wage increases compared to the RN unit at St. Peter’s.

In addition, we made proposals on EIB and PTO. The Hospital’s position is that they will move forward with the changes to EIB/PTO because these changes were announced before the unit unionized. Our position is that the Hospital should wait to implement any changes and we need to bargain over EIB/PTO. We will be looking into legal avenues to delay the implementation of the program. 

One of the Bargaining Team’s priorities is ensuring we protect EIB/PTO. In order to achieve this we will need to take action and show the Hospital that we are willing to fight to keep EIB!

One way to take action is by wearing a sticker and posting a sign in your car while at work. If you have not received a car sign or sticker, please contact your Bargaining Team or Union Rep, Erin McCoy @ (206) 436-6598. Our next bargaining session will be on December 9 where we will continue talking about EIB/PTO. In additional, we will be holding a contract action team meeting via Zoom on December 14 @ 5:30 PM, where we will discuss bargaining in more detail.

Your Support Service Bargaining Team: Necole Moore, EVS; KayCee Grimm, Lab; Kim Jorgenson, ED HUC; Aaron Green, Kitchen; Laura Norton, Endo Tech