St. Joseph Medical Center Tech Bargaining Update
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On Tuesday, March 24, our Union Bargaining Team at St. Joe’s met with Management for our second day of negotiations.
Our Bargaining Team worked diligently across several prep sessions to finalize all of our proposals, which we then presented at our initial session on March 4; this included both non-economic (including clarifiers on our Just Cause protections, equal opportunity language, and the PTO approval process and holiday work rotations), as well as economic (like premiums, differentials, health insurance benefits, and of course- wages!) sections.
Over the course of our first two sessions, we’ve reached agreements with the Employer on:
A process to remove disciplinary actions from an employees’ personnel files (or to guarantee they will not be used for future discipline) following a set period of time
Amending the “changing time” (donning & doffing) and Overtime articles to remove references to timeclock rounding- a practice which changed during the active term of our union contract
Aligning the section on Meal & Rest periods to more closely resemble state law
While we have not received the Employer’s responses to our economic proposals, we did get two initial economic takeaways proposed to us by CommonSpirit at our session on March 24- which included a proposal to remove the “pay-in-lieu of benefits” wage differential (currently, employees who waive benefits receive a 15.00% increase to their pay), as well as a change to the eligibility qualifiers regarding full-time or part-time health insurance benefits cost sharing, which in summary would result in higher costs towards premiums to a number of employees who are currently seeing a larger portion covered by CommonSpirit as full-time employees. Our team returned counter-proposals on these shortly thereafter, wherein we rejected these two management proposals outright.
Our next bargaining date is scheduled for April 29. We are determined to press forward on the issues that matter most: fair pay, workplace protections, affordable benefits, and competitive compensation for our lifesaving work!
“We’re proud of the work we’ve done so far, & proud of the proposals we’ve brought to the table! We’re looking forward to the bargain ahead!” -Michelle Gilmore; Respiratory Therapist
CONTRACT ACTION TEAM MEETING: Thursday, April 2, 2026 from 6:00PM – 7:00PM on Zoom >>
Our Union Bargaining Team: Michelle Gilmore, Respiratory Therapist; Monica Dewitt, Pharmacy Tech; Vanessa Giles, Surgical Technologist; Chad Michels, Cardiovascular Technologist; Sissy Allison, Surgical Technologist
