MultiCare Mary Bridge Pediatric Transfer Center RN Accretion - Bargaining Update #1

On Wednesday, February 4, our Bargaining Team representing the newly-unionized Pediatric Transfer Center RNs at Mary Bridge met with MultiCare for our first day of negotiations on how our group will enter into the existing RN Union contract.

Nurses working in the Pediatric Transfer Center won our Union election—certifying that we will be represented members of UFCW Local 3000—in late summer 2025. Because we will be joining the existing RN contract which already covers the majority of workplace topics like wages, working conditions, hours of work and overtime, we will engage in bargaining over the acquisition of our department into the larger contract.

For the most part, this results in a relatively more straightforward type of contract negotiations with the Employer. A direct example is the Memorandum of Understanding our team put together to present to MultiCare, which contained only five sections: seniority, PTO Requests and Accruals, floating and scheduling provisions within the Pediatric Transfer Center—and importantly—how our non-Union wages will be converted to placement on the Union contract wage scale. Unfortunately, this is where things seemed to get a bit more complicated in terms of management's position. In fact, placement on the wage scales remains the only piece we did not reach mutually agreed-upon language on.

While we proposed that placement would be based on credit for our years of nursing experience—with the important clarifier that this would not result in any decrease to our current wages if we're currently paid above where we would land on the Union scale based on experience—the Employer rejected the language that this placement would not decrease our wages. This theoretically opens up the possibility for a decrease in wages if our current rate is above that of the Union wage scale rate.

What's even more aggravating about this response is that MultiCare has agreed to follow a nearly identical process for several newly organized units across the past few years, meaning that what we are asking for is not anything more than what MultiCare has already agreed to for plenty of other unionized workers.

Unfortunately, our teams were not able to come to an agreement on our placement on the wage scales by the end of our scheduled session, and so we will now work to coordinate additional bargaining dates to continue these discussions. We're looking forward to winning a fair Agreement that respects our years of RN experience without compromising what we're already being paid by MultiCare.

Pediatric Transfer Center RN Bargaining Team: Kate Kersen, Megan Little