MultiCare Capital Medical Center Professionals Waiting for a Wage Scale

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On Friday, January 9, we met with MultiCare for our fourth session of union contract negotiations. We started off our day by providing Management with our responses to a number of articles following our previous bargaining session; including language on hours of work and overtime, paid time off, medical/personal/and educational leaves of absence, health insurance benefits, and a grievance procedure. After returning these articles to Management, all of the outstanding contract items were in MultiCare’s court to work on and respond to.
 
In the afternoon, the employer returned a comprehensive proposal that had a wage proposal that would keep everyone at their current wage and would only provide raises when MultiCare unilaterally determined they were owed. Along with maintaining an Employer-determined compensation structure, Management also proposed to defer to MultiCare policy within multiple parts of our union contract rather than including the language within our CBA- sections such as PTO, time off between shifts, shift differentials and wage premiums. By stating that they would merely continue to follow their own policies, Management would be permitted to change these practices at any given time, for any given reason- leaving little recourse or collaboration for our union.
 
We felt like it would be appropriate to frame this session of negotiations through the lens of some of MultiCare’s principles:

  • We organized our union because we see other hospital Professionals being paid on union wage scales which provide consistent market increases; ensuring competitive pay for our professions, along with rewarding years of experience. However, the employer’s proposal indicated that they believe there is no need for a wage scale, and they instead presented our team with language that maintains the current market-analysis and merit-increase structure. We don’t feel that this shows our hard work the respect it deserves!

  • While their core values champion collaboration, Management rejected including a defined PTO accrual table and vacation scheduling language in our CBA; instead, deferring once again to existing MultiCare policy and practice.

We will continue to negotiate a fair union contract that pays us fair wages and look forward to getting back to the table on January 22.

Join our union Bargaining Committee, as well as our UFCW staff negotiator and new Union Representative, Penny Cramer, for a Contract Action Team meeting on Thursday, January 15 at 7pm to discuss next steps and ways to build collective power to win a strong first contract!

Contract Action Team Meeting: January 15, at 7pm via Zoom
Join Zoom Meeting here >>

Meeting ID: 832 2571 3081 Passcode: 754340

Show Solidarity!

In addition, our Bargaining Committee will have union swag to distribute to wear and show our solidarity!