After hundreds of us marched on the picket line including nurses and techs at Everett and St. Peter’s on May 5, Providence continues to disrespect us at the table! We have worked through an entire pandemic short staffed and being undervalued! Providence is trying to frustrate us so we will accept a bad deal. We are essential workers and deserve more than what Providence is offering. 

On May 11, we discussed proposals regarding health insurance, holidays, daily/weekly overtime, PTO, and rates of pay. One of the main reasons we unionized was to keep our EIB/PTO plan. Providence announced the elimination of EIB prior to bargaining, but never announced any changes to our PTO plan until we were in contract negotiations. Due to this change in the status quo, we will be filing an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). We filed a charge for St. Peter’s and the NLRB found merit in our case! This means that Providence must reinstate the original PTO plan at St. Peter’s. At Centralia, we need to show Providence that we want to keep our original PTO plan and they must bargain with us to change it! 

In addition, Providence finally proposed their wage proposal which is a continuation of their merit increase/ “minimum, midpoint, maximum” pay scale. This proposal would continue the wage disparity amongst our unit and would not take into account our years of service. Providence can arbitrarily place us anywhere on their pay scale and our merit increases would be up to our core leaders. In other union contracts, Providence union members have: 1) annual wage increases 2) anniversary date wage increases 3) wage scale with at least 20 steps  

We believe that we must take further action to move them away from this proposal which is a drastic deviation from all other union contracts with Providence. Our next action will most likely be to vote down Providence’s proposal. We will be holding a contract action team meeting to discuss bargaining on May 26 and 27.

In Solidarity, Your Tech Bargaining Team: Jen Mullins, Rad Tech; Jamie Freeman, RT; Verity Olsen, Pharmacy Tech; Kathleen Spencer, RT; Jen Frunz, Mammo Tech 

PCH will have in person meetings at Fort Borst Park in Centralia on Wednesday, May 26 from 1-3 pm, and Thursday, May 27 from 5-7 pm!