MultiCare Covington Medical Center Bargaining Update

Our meeting with MultiCare on December 5 left us hoping for more. Over the previous two sessions, we provided Management with a significant majority of our non-economic and economic proposals. At our previous session, we were told by Management that they anticipated getting us responses today, but unfortunately, the responses from Management amounted to only a handful of counters; an even smaller number of which were substantive. Our Union Bargaining Team has worked hard to get a lot in their court early in negotiations to build momentum in this process, so the small number of responses from MultiCare from them feels disappointing.
 
After we received the Employer’s response, we spent the majority of the day continuing our work on wage scale proposals. While we did not provide this proposal to the Employer prior to the end of the day, we anticipate getting this on the table within our next session or so. We are working diligently on our wage proposal before we get it to Management because as we all know, our wages are trailing behind. It’s important to our Bargaining Team that we’re really evaluating the health care wage market and not just aiming to increase our wages to meet the market now- but to maintain strong competitive wages throughout the duration of our three-year contract.
 
Our next session is on December 18, we are hopeful that the Employer will come with more proposals for us, and we’re looking forward to getting our wage scale proposal on the table.
 
Our Union Bargaining Team: Derek Howard- Engineer; Erin Reynolds- Hospital Unit Coordinator/Emergency Services Representative; Faith Soriano-Miller- RN; Fortunate Seyefori Edwin- Patient Care Technician; Gosia Marin- Surgical Technician; Luz Martinez- Patient Care Technician; Omar Gutierrez- Distribution Clerk (not pictured); Poonam Gill- RN (not pictured); Rich Maresma-RN