On Monday, December 15, our Bargaining Team representing the newly-organized oncology clinic workers at Optum Care, Inc. met with management for our first official session of negotiations toward our first Union contract!

Leading up to today, our Union team met for a final contract audit on December 10, where we spent the day reviewing bargaining surveys, analyzing regional wages, and discussing our top priorities—which we then used to draft our initial set of proposals for management.

Kicking off our first bargaining date, we did one last check of our non-economic proposals (things that do not directly impact wages; for instance, workplace safety and other job protections), before passing them across the table to management. Unfortunately, the Optum management team was unable to meet with us in-person on December 15, so our joint-sessions with them were held on Zoom—however, we were encouraged by their engagement in our proposals, and after answering a few questions they had for us on the articles we'd presented, both teams returned to their separate caucus meetings.

Following our first meeting with management in the morning, the momentum seemed to carry on into the afternoon, and we ended up meeting with management two additional times! At our second joint-session with Optum, management returned a couple of counterproposals, which contained responses to a few of the articles we'd presented earlier, and new articles from their team. Lastly, at our third joint-session with Optum, we provided management with our initial set of economic proposals; including Paid Time Off (PTO) accruals, overtime, extra shift bonuses, and premiums/differentials, and more. While we did not get responses from the Employer on these economics, they did return some additional non-economic contract articles; namely, our proposal on Union seniority—where their responses included only a small number of counters, mostly to timelines for layoff notices, job postings, and so on—however, they aligned the bulk of their proposals to the language we'd initially drafted.

In summary—our team feels cautiously optimistic about how our first day of contract negotiations went—given the positive engagement and how productive today was—we're really looking forward to getting back to the bargaining table to continue working toward a Collective Bargaining Agreement!

Bargaining Team: Janis Laffin, RN; Molly Hugo, RN; Ashley Seidelman, Patient Care Coordinator; Elizabeth Reece, Certified Medical Assistant

"Our first bargaining day was amenable—things went pretty smoothly! I think we're all looking forward to the journey ahead!" — Janis Laffin, RN