Optum Care, Inc Bargaining Update
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On Monday, April 20, and Tuesday, April 21, we met with Management to continue negotiations for our first union contract. During these back-to-back sessions, we continued the productive exchange of the non-economic articles proposed for our contract, and reached tentative agreements on sections like:
Restrictions on how and when management can change individual working schedules
Language outlining our rights to breaks & lunches during our shifts- including relevant pay requirements when a lunch break is interrupted or missed
The low census rotation- which outlines the order that staff will be released from shift if patient census is ever too high for how many employees are scheduled
Labor/Management Committee; which is an ongoing joint committee between union workers and management, to foster proper administration of our union contract
While this progress was great- we couldn’t help but feel concerned that it had now been more than a month since we presented our economic proposals to Optum, and had yet to receive any responses on them. We asked Management about this in the afternoon on Monday, and we were a bit shocked to hear that they wouldn’t have responses to economics by tomorrow… moreover- when we asked for an ETA, we were told that their rough estimate was during the summer months. They explained that much of the extended timeframe is due to a small team on their end who have to work on all of economics for multiple other union contracts- and while we understand that this may create administrative difficulties, our team worked very hard to get Management extensive and thorough proposals very quickly so we could dig in and get to a contract soon!
Because of this timeframe, we also discussed whether there are any steps Management can take now to prepare for the transition from non-union pay to union wage scales (and still conveying to Management that we’re extremely hopeful that their responses come sooner than the timeframe we heard from them), and we are hoping to work with them to get some preliminary “years of experience” calculations done for Everett Clinic workers so these don’t cause any additional delays when a contract is fully in-place.
To hear more about ongoing negotiations, and actions we can take to build power to win a strong union contract, join our next Contract Action Team meeting:
Contract Action Team (CAT) Meeting: Tuesday, April 28 from 7:00 PM – 8:00PM on Zoom >>
Meeting ID: 870 1048 7945 Passcode: 257207
Our Union Bargaining Team: Janis Laffin, RN; Molly Hugo, RN; Ashley Seidelman, Patient Care Coordinator
