Trios Health RN BARGAINING UPDATE

Our Union Bargaining Team met with management for back-to-back bargaining dates on 29 and 30, totaling five sessions so far with Trios.
 
We went into these two dates hoping that because the Employer have had our economic proposals in their court since our first session (June 24), and that two days together could translate to an increase in momentum at the table- we could report out that some remarkable progress was made.
 
However, the Employer’s proposals remained underwhelming, when they even came…
 
We still have not gotten wages back from management, though we did discuss a few of the economic sections of our contract: namely after receiving one of the aforementioned underwhelming counterproposals regarding a memorandum of understanding for RNs who perform SANE exams. Which the Employer returned the same iteration of the Memorandum of Understanding proposal they brought to us more than one year ago; which only speaks to the examination itself.
 
Whereas our proposed MOU provides financial incentives to SANE nurses & importantly aims to build a Sexual Assault Examination process designed to keep patients safe at Trios Health and lessen the likelihood that they’ll need to seek examinations elsewhere (due to lack of SANE-trained RNs), which we also stressed likely has an impact on whether patients will even report to another hospital to have SANE exams conducted at all.
 
Further, our proposed SANE MOU establishes a continuation of care process for any collected samples and accounts for relevant trial proceedings that SANE RNs partake in to support vulnerable patients at their most vulnerable times.
 
We ended our two days together with a handful of tentatively agreed-to language amendments; like how probationary RNs will access benefits, & expansions to the workplace just cause/progressive discipline track for union nurses.
 
We are hopeful that at our next sessions with Trios Health (tentatively scheduled for September 9 and 10) the Employer will bring us more substantial counterproposals on non-economics- and fully expect that we will finally receive their initial wage scale package.

Contract Action Team meeting: Tuesday, August 4 from 6:00PM – 7:30PM
in person UFCW 3000 Richland Office: 2505 Duportail St, Suite D, Richland, WA 99352-4079And online via Microsoft Teams >>

“Overall, very disappointed in their responses. We really hoped we’d be further along into the process of negotiations after two days in a row… but our economic bucket remains empty!” -Yesina
 
Our Union Bargaining Team: Tami Ottenbreit, OB RN; Stephanie Weibel, ER RN; Yesina Ellis, ICU RN; Holly Hurst, Med Surg RN; Karen Campbell, Surgery RN
 
If you’re interested in being a member of our Contract Action Team, call our Union Representative Juanita Quezada at (509) 340-7407.