After seven months of bargaining and mediation we finally met with Management in person. This really allowed us to have productive dialog regarding our proposals. We hope Management will now listen and take our concerns seriously.

Due to Management’s lack of respect and movement we were forced to bring a mediator into bargaining. She has been helpful in bringing us closer to a fair deal, but Management says we are still pretty far apart. If Management actually listened and respected the concerns of their workers we wouldn’t be so far apart. It is time for Management to Respect us, Pay us and Protect us!

In order to keep the hospital running well and efficient, people have to have joy in their work! That joy comes from the service we provide to patients. However, if our service is not valued or recognized by management the joy we get from our service to our patients dies out... in healthcare we can refer to it as burnout. What we are asking for is not a lot, if the hospital is small and not growing administrators should look at themselves - it doesn't fall on employees! If they want to retain staff then they need to value people, if they are in the process of growing they need to value the great staff they currently have, so that when the growth comes we all provide excellent care. It almost feels like we are begging for safety nets just to fulfill our FTEs. Management constantly low census us and many of us lose out on pay. The cost of living is way to high for people to not be able to meet their FTEs and get a full pay check. We have proposed language to limit Low Census and to help us secure our pay checks and Management continues to ignore our needs. It was great having dialog but its time for Management to take action and give us what we need! They say they want to recruit and retain workers but they don’t want to make the actions to make it happen. Wages are only one part of retention working conditions and the ability to work to make the wages are the other part of retention.

“Meeting in person allowed for a freer flow of bargaining ideas across the table. We still haven’t reached a deal but we had great discussion.” — Ken Ferrell

“Today we were able to express that union members are as valuable as nonunion workers and we are entitled to guaranteed FTEs and full paychecks just like travelers and system float!” — Faith Soriano-Miller

“Management said that float pool is the future of staffing, but we know Core staff are the present, future and backbone of staffing.” — Luz Martinez

Join us our Contract Action Team meeting via zoom!
Thursday, May 25 @ 1pm-2pm or 6pm-7pm

If you have any questions, please contact our Rep Ian Jacobson 206-436-6550.