Seattle Children’s Hospital Tech - Bargaining Begins!

Yesterday, December 14, our team met with management for a productive first bargaining session. We presented management with a flurry of non-economic proposals spanning nine different articles of our contract. These proposals came directly from feedback we heard from our coworkers and aim to address many of the issues we have all been facing at work. 

This included a robust Union Access language proposal, which would ensure that every new hire gets a chance to learn about their union and every worker will be able to be kept up to date on what is happening with their Union; a complete overhaul of our Equal Opportunity language, demanding the management be held accountable to upholding the values of equity they say they are committed to; a new parking and transit policy that would make commuting to and from work significantly more affordable; and several other strong proposals. Management also gave us their initial proposals, which our team has started to work on responses to. We hope to continue making progress on these language proposals in our next session so we can clear the way for our extremely important discussion about economic issues. Keep an eye out for more updates as we have more information to share our next session on Tuesday, December 21. 

We invite you to join our second virtual Contract Action Team meeting, where we will talk about what’s happening at the table in further detail and explain what workers can do to help support our efforts at the table, tomorrow on Thursday, December 16 @ 3:30PM. 

“We proposed some highly requested changes today and we are tentatively hopeful that management will cooperate in passing these desperately needed proposals.”

— Madison Derksema, Pharmacy Tech

Our SCH Tech bargaining team: Matt Brabant - Respiratory Educator, Madison Derksema - Pharmacy Tech, Angela Ballard – Surgical Tech, Kellie Koenig – Ultrasound Tech, Ashley Strickland – Respiratory Transport, Tyler Schaffer – Anesthesia Tech, Tesfaldet Kidanemariam – Respiratory Therapist