After a long day of bargaining on Thursday, November 12, it was clear that St. Joseph Medical Center (CommonSpirit) was unwilling to accept our common-sense solutions for a fair contract. Instead, throughout the bargain we believe St. Joseph Medical Center violated workers’ rights under federal law by committing Unfair Labor Practices (ULP) including removing union literature from employee lounges and inappropriately questioning workers about their participation in concerted protected activity…
For several months we’ve been working on a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to formally move you into the MultiCare Clinics Contract. We will be holding a meeting to talk about the transition into the Clinics Contract and vote on the proposed MOU.
Our Bargaining Team is excited to announce we have reached a tentative agreement with the Employer for the accretion of the Anesthesia Techs, Medical Lab Techs, and Lab Assistants. Our team is recommending a YES vote! Please come see us and learn the details of these accretions.
On Thursday, November 5, our union Bargaining Team representing the newly organized Therapies Unit at MultiCare Mary Bridge met with management for our second day of negotiations towards our first union contract.
Our Bargaining Team met with the Employer on November 6 for a full day of bargaining. We had robust conversations around proposals, reached a few more tentative agreements, and gained understanding around key issues. The Bargaining Team is encouraged by the progress made today and is hopeful for our next session on November 20.
We entered the first week of November ready for two bargaining sessions with Trios on November 3 and 4, but unfortunately, unforeseen circumstances out of the Employer’s control led to the cancellation of our Tuesday session. Although this meant we wouldn’t be exchanging proposals with them, our team still opted to meet and prepare counters, discuss outstanding articles, and brainstorm strategies to move forward. We also remarked on the strong turnout at our Strike Pledge Kick-Off & Bargaining Update meeting on November 2, which reinforces to our Bargaining Team that we have the support of our union siblings at our backs at the bargaining table!
Our team will be returning to the bargaining table on Thursday, November 12, ready to reach a deal or give our notice to strike. For healthcare facilities, strike notices must be given to the hospital and the federal mediation service at least 10 days prior to the beginning of a strike. At our next session our Union President, Faye Guenther and Secretary Treasurer, Sean Embly will join to help support us as we continue to prepare for a ULP Strike. We are committed to our fight for a fair contract with no takeaways. A contract that reflects the hard work we do every day. And we are committed to standing up for our worker rights and against management that we believe is violating labor law by unlawfully questioning workers about if they are going to participate in a strike or other protected action
Our worker-led Bargaining Team is excited to announce that we have reached a tentative agreement with Football NW on our first Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) and are recommending a YES vote.
In 2021, our union fought for two workers —Donna Rasmussen of PCC-View Ridge and Laurae McIntyre of PCC-Fremont—to win seats on the PCC Board of Trustees. These workers brought a unique perspective to the board, tapping their lived experiences with coworkers, customers, and the community to help steer the future of the co-op.
To maintain a strong worker voice on PCC’s Board, we need to act now.
Attention EvergreenHealth Kirkland Laboratory Technical Coordinator, Point of Care Specialist and Neurodiagnostic Technician and Technologist Members!
UFCW 3000 is announcing a accretion ratification vote for EvergreenHealth Kirkland Lab and EEG members.
When we made the Employer’s last proposal public, Labcorp’s supposal had not been given to the Union. We received it last Friday, and it was never formally presented at the bargaining table.
On Tuesday, October 27, our union Bargaining Team representing the newly-organized clinic workers in the MultiCare Mary Bridge Therapies group met with management for our first official session of negotiations towards our first union contract!
On Wednesday, October 21, and Thursday, October 22, our union Bargaining Team met with Management for our seventh and eighth contract negotiation sessions this cycle.
As with our back-to-back sessions in July and September, we left these two days disappointed by Management’s overall pace at the bargaining table;
With ULPs on the horizon and a strike authorization in hand, we bargained late into the night two days this week. While some progress was made, the hospital is still short of meeting our priorities and continues to push their takeaways. We will not let that happen! Stay prepared and join us for all the upcoming Strike preparation meetings via ZOOM to learn more about the next steps in your fight for a best contract.
Our collective actions over the last two weeks have paid off in this bargaining session, and we are encouraged by the results! Management arrived prepared to engage and met with our team early in the day, replying to several outstanding proposals. Throughout the course of the day, we reached sixteen tentative agreements. One of these was a major breakthrough in our economic proposals – agreeing to the definitions of full time and part time employees. Thank you to our Contract Action Team members who pulled a lot of information to support the need for these definitions.
The union met with LabCorp on Wednesday, October 28, and once again received unacceptable, disrespectful proposals. LabCorp offers minimal, below-market wage increases, resists giving reasonable notice of outsourcing, and wants to strip away our rights and gain total power to change your health insurance whenever it chooses. The company blames upcoming Medicare reimbursement cuts for refusing to move closer to our proposals, but we are skeptical: LabCorp is thriving financially, its stock price is rising, and CEO Adam Schechter received $18,399,913 in compensation last year.
Grocery executives are working to grab every penny from their workers and members of our communities. Every contract negotiation is an opportunity to fight for what we deserve and work to steer the grocery industry back on track, to focus on what matters: delivering quality customer service and great products to feed our neighbors.
In our last contract negotiations, our union won the largest wage increases that we’ve seen, secured a transition to the stable our union health plan through the UFCW Spokane healthcare Trust, and ensured funding to keep our pension plan dependable for retirement. Our NE Oregon contracts recently expired, and our union is prioritizing a new contract that builds upon our previous wins.
After four long days of bargaining with the Employer and countless hours of preparation, our Bargaining Team reached a Tentative Agreement (TA) that we are excited to bring back to our members!
While our initial bargaining sessions were largely positive and relatively low stakes, we now have reached the meat and potato economic proposals that our unit cares about most. This is often the most challenging stage of bargaining – especially when bargaining a first contract. An example from today: in response to our extensively researched wage proposal, the company stated "we don't want to change how we do things" without further discussion.
As 2,500 UFCW 3000 members at MultiCare continue preparations for contract bargaining to begin early next year, there are several upcoming opportunities to gather, discuss and contribute. First off, a big thanks to all who completed the bargaining surveys during August and September. That information will be crucial in our assessing priorities before bargaining.
For several months we’ve been working on a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to formally move you into the MultiCare Clinics Contract. We will be holding a meeting to talk about the transition into the Clinics Contract and vote on the proposed MOU.
Read MoreMultiCare continues to propose a wage scale placement process that could result in significant wage cuts for some members. Our Union Bargaining Team remains committed to fighting any proposal that moves workers backward.
Read MoreWe are the Union. The members of UFCW 3000 are over 50,000 members working in grocery, retail, health care, meat packing, cannabis, & other industries across Washington state, north-east Oregon, and northern Idaho. UFCW 3000 is a chartered member of UFCW International with over 1.4 million workers in North America.
To build a powerful Union that fights for economic, political and social justice in our workplaces and in our communities.
Correcting the Record: Decades after Organizing Her Own Unit, Leslie Ball Is Still Fighting for Her Coworkers
Leslie Ball, a certified surgical technologist at St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma and a longtime UFCW 3000 Union Steward, has spent decades standing up for herself and her coworkers.
Her fight for better working conditions began in the late 1990s, when she received a 30-cent wage increase, which ended up only being a five-cent raise after her employer reduced her shift differential by a quarter. With years of experience and a deep understanding of the value surgical techs bring to the table, she knew a nickel wasn’t going to cut it. So she and a coworker, Gail Miller, started organizing their colleagues at St. Joe's despite warnings that previous organizing efforts had failed.
Within a year, they helped Radiology, Respiratory Therapy, Pharmacy, Physical Therapy, and other departments form the hospital’s first Technical Unit, which ratified its first contract in 1999.
Jenny C., a transporter at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, knows what it looks like when management hopes a problem will just go away.
Jenny has watched the facility's transport elevators malfunction for more than a year, filing report after report after each incident she witnessed. Supervisors did not appear to take these complaints seriously.
