Our Union Bargaining Team: Janis Laffin, RN; Molly Hugo, RN; Ashley Seidelman, Patient Care Coordinator; Elizabeth Reece, Certified Medical Assistant

“Progress requires compromise; and we’re here and ready to do what we need to win a strong first union contract!” -Elizabeth Reece; CNA

On Tuesday, February 10 and 11, our union Bargaining Team representing the newly organized healthcare workers at the Optum Everett Clinic met with Management for back-to-back in-person negotiations sessions.

On Tuesday, we started off our day by receiving the Employer’s counterproposals to a few subsections of our proposed contract; namely, disciplinary protections and a non-discrimination clause. Our team got right to work on responding to these articles, and returned these- along with a proposed Memorandum of Understanding regarding Immigration resources- shortly thereafter. In the early afternoon, we got Optum’s counters on these same sections, as well as two additional articles we had previously discussed (Labor/Management Committee and Recall Rights in cases of layoff). Our team once again remarked on the positive discussions we found ourselves in with the Management team- seemingly working through issues or concerns on either end of the table. The only issue we had is that despite our frequent meetings throughout each of the last few bargaining sessions, our team had worked diligently to get the Employer a significant number of proposals early-on in the hopes of making significant progress at each bargaining session. When we brought this sentiment to Management, we were positively surprised when they returned for another joint-session near the end of our first day with more than just a handful of proposals; in fact, all of Article 2 (Union Matters) was returned to us for response, containing minor counters and even matching the original language for a number of sections in our initial proposals.

Our first of two days concluded with our union bargaining team feeling like some really positive momentum had picked up, and we even ended up reaching Tentative Agreements on:

Discipline & Discharge; including just-cause protections (meaning the Employer cannot discipline employees without providing substantiating evidence!), and the concept of progressive discipline.
Recall rights; which requires the Employer to notify any previously laid-off workers if their former position becomes available in the future, before they post the position externally

Regarding Wednesday the 11, we continued on with an overall productive day of first contract negotiations; beginning in the morning by our team returning proposals on Articles 1 (Recognition) and 2 (Union Matters), and 13 (Labor Management Committee)- containing Tentative Agreements on:

Successorship: Optum will notify us in advance of any prospective merger/transfer or sale of ownership of the Clinic so we can meet and negotiate over how this may impact us!
Union Membership: Obligations for employees regarding their participation as active members of our union; as well as employer-deductions of membership dues or voluntary political action contributions.
Other Union Matters: including use of on-site meeting rooms for union purposes, work-time release for participation in union negotiations and retroactive benefits reimbursements following negotiations, and (unpaid) union leave.

In terms of proposals we continued to discuss throughout our second day together, many of which we got quite close to coming to mutually aligned language on, include our Grievance Procedure (how our union contract is enforced if the Employer violate any of the agreed-upon language; and the Labor Management Committee (which is an ongoing committee between employees and Management to assist in the facilitation and administration of our Collective Bargaining Agreement!)

In our final meeting of the day with the Employer on February 11, our union Bargaining Team provided them with our proposal on wages including how current employees will be placed onto the union wage scales- as well as our proposal on the Duration of our union contract (which determines when in the future we enter negotiations again!) which we proposed at three years.

We’re proud to announce that we feel that we’re making really significant progress on our first union contract; were holding good conversations with the Management team at the table, and we’re seeing that when the Employer have signaled questions or concerns with language we’ve proposed, we’re able to work together to reach mutually agreed-upon language in just a few counters!

We’re eager to continue negotiations with Optum Care, Inc at our next scheduled in-person bargaining dates on April 7, 8, and 9, particularly now that Management have all of our proposals in their hands!