St. Joseph Medical Center Pharmacists Bargaining Update

Our fifth session at the bargaining table with management felt like an unfortunate shift when compared to the progress we’ve made to this point; where our first few sessions resulted in a high number of the economic and non-economic proposals being resolved in just a few exchanges; the our fifth session found the Employer returning only a partial response to our proposals on health insurance and benefits, along with their initial wage proposal, which only slightly places Pharmacist wages at SJMC above those at St. Michael Medical Center- whose contract cycle follows ours by only a few months- meaning they’ll be entering negotiations soon too.
 
Despite our disappointment, we knew the next step we should take was to get right back to work and provide management with our counters by the end of the day to keep the process moving forward. With the exception of our benefits proposal, which we felt was necessary to await the employer’s complete response-to, prior to working on a counter ourselves.
 
Regarding our wage proposal; knowing full-well that management’s proposal of two percent (2.00%) in year 1, followed by one and one-half percent (1.50%) across-the-board increases in both years 2 & 3 of our contract would hardly even make us competitive with the wage scale we already have- our team did not make amendments to the proposed increases we suggested towards the top of the wage scale (to incentivize retention of long-term Pharmacists); frankly, we feel that our proposal considered a number of factors, and we proposed a number of structural changes to the scale to accommodate for those- but we also feel that it was not an unreasonable proposal.
 
We are currently working on scheduling future dates with St. Joe’s to continue negotiations within the coming weeks, and we’re remaining optimistic that we can rebuild the momentum we had prior to today’s session to win a strong union contract.
 
Our Union Bargaining Team: Tony Casanova, Clinical Pharmacist Specialist; Amanda Carter, Ambulatory Services Clinical Pharmacist; Becky Mountjoy, Clinical Pharmacist