Providence St. Peter Hospital Professionals Bargaining Begins!
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On Thursday, August 28, our bargaining team for the Professionals at Providence St. Peter Hospital met with management for our first official day of contract negotiations… and a productive first day, at that!
To kick-off our day, our union team spent the morning hours reviewing and discussing the final draft of what would later be our initial contract proposal. We determined that to get this process started on the right foot, it could serve to our benefit to get a significant number of contract articles across the table to the Employer right away- and so just before both teams broke for lunch, we met with the Employer and provided them with a proposal encapsulating more than sixty (60) individual Articles commonly found in union contracts, and more specifically, within UFCW 300 union contracts bargained by Providence workers all over the state, for instance:
Recognition of our Professionals bargaining unit within Providence St. Peter Hospital
Our rights as union members, such as serving as a union steward, our right to representation during investigatory interviews with management by a union steward or our union rep, and a new-hire orientation process so our union can meet with new professionals & introduce them!
Protections against unjust corrective action, so our union can defend us in situations where the Employer cannot substantiate disciplines or termination!
A Grievance Procedure, which is the process that outlines how a violation of our contract by the Employer is handled & resolved; ensuring provisions of our union contract are enforceable!
We believe this approach to negotiating our first contract ensures that we can move into the issues which matter most to our coworkers as soon as possible; premiums, differentials, and fighting for a union wage scale to secure competitive pay, and guaranteeing set pay increases!
Given the range of positions and job classifications within our Professionals bargaining unit, we determined that there were a number of contract articles we had previously drafted which would require additional discussion- primarily to verify that existing policies or processes that work well (like flexible scheduling abilities!) are not inadvertently changed by our union contract- and so we spent the remainder of the afternoon going over different departments’ scheduling practices, vacation approval guidelines, and continuing education allotments, which we anticipate proposing to Providence at our next bargaining date.
We look forward to meeting with management again at our scheduled sessions on September 3rd & 4th to continue negotiations on our first union contract!
Stay tuned following our sessions on 9/3 & 9/4 for information on our Contract Action Team (CAT) meeting, where we will discuss our progress so far at the bargaining table, & actions we can take if we are experiencing difficulties with management!
“We’re so glad to have our first day of bargaining together! We’re proud of the strong representation we have at the table as well, and feel great that so many department’s interests can be made clear throughout this process!”
-Kristine Pepper; Clinical Pharmacist
Our union bargaining team: Rita Palmquist, Case Manager MSW; Elise Steinmetz, Physical Therapist; Sydney Lobdell, Dietitian; -Kristine Pepper, Clinical Pharmacist; Brenda Arend, Speech Language Pathologist; Diana Herr, Senior Medical Laboratory Scientist.
