We last met with Recovery Café on September 4 to continue our negotiations. Recovery Café has maintained their position that they want to keep the ability to fire or discipline people without giving them a good reason. It is difficult to overstate how radical this position is. The whole point of a union is to resist that power. Requiring Recovery Café to name a cause when they want to fire or formally reprimand an employee is a common standard that they should follow. We will continue to fight back against their position until we secure this fundamental just-cause language.

That said, we did make some progress on other aspects of our contract, including coming to a tentative agreement on the grievance procedure and developing momentum on proposals regarding harassment and other general provisions. While we have more dates scheduled with Recovery Cafe, we hope that we can significantly improve the pace of negotiations to begin bargaining around economic issues such as wages soon.

We will hold our next contract membership meeting on September 18 at 7pm.