“Today, Management gave us a starting point to work from and although it is not close to where we want to be we know with your help we know we can get the strong wages we all deserve!”

-Angie Ballard, Surgical Tech

Yesterday, on Thursday, January 20, our Bargaining Team met with Management for our fourth negotiation session. We started the day by providing a set of strong counter proposals on a variety of non-economic topics then management gave us their economic proposal.

While at first glance Management’s proposal can seem promising, a closer look shows that it is still woefully lacking. They claim it would provide an average 8% wage increase on top of a 2.25% wage increase across the board increase Year 1, however this is misleading. The reality is that this “average” is extremely skewed by the fact that only a handful of positions, one’s that were left behind by Management in our last negotiations, would receive large wage increases; everyone else would only see meager increases. What’s even worse is that almost all of the increases they proposed, including the larger ones, would only serve to bring our wages to just below market for hospitals in the area and comparing us to non-specialty hospitals is like comparing apples and oranges. On top of all of this, they claim their focus on wages means we don’t need to the improve other economic elements of our contract (premiums, differentials, Time Away accruals, parking costs, insurance costs, etc) despite the fact that the hospitals they are comparing us to have better benefits in each of these areas.

We won’t be fooled. Seattle Children’s Hospital needs to do better. As specialty hospital we provide care which is unparalleled in the local area and requires additionally levels of training and competence compared to these non-specialty hospitals. As a result, we believe our wages, premiums, differentials, and other economic benefits should lead the market, rather than trail behind it.

In our next session on Tuesday, January 25, we plan to provide our robust economic counter to Management. This will include market and industry leading wages for all of us as well as substrative increases to the other economic elements of our contract Management wants to leave behind.

Now more than ever, our Bargaining Team needs your help to win a strong contract. We need stand together and show Management that it will take more than just inadequate wage increases to fix the massive staffing crisis we are facing!

You and your coworkers can get more involved by coming to our Contract Action Team (CAT) meetings where we discuss what’s happening at the table in more detail and talk about the upcoming actions we are planning. Our next meeting is this coming Monday, January 24 at 4:30PM, RSVP to join the Zoom meeting at: https://bit.ly/SCH-CAT

To learn more about how you can stay informed and help our team at the table please call you Union Rep Christie Harris at (206) 436-6606 and follow our Instagram page @schworkers.

Hear from our Bargaining Team about negotiations! RSVP to get Zoom meeting details emailed to you!
Monday, January 24
4:30 PM
https://bit.ly/SCH-CAT

Bargaining Team: Matt Brabant - Respiratory Educator; Madison Derksema - Pharm Tech; Angela Ballard – Surgical Tech; Kellie Koenig - Ultrasound Tech; Ashley Strickland - Respiratory Transport; Tyler Schaffer - Anesthesia Tech; Tesfaldet Kidanemariam - Respiratory Therapist