“Wages for some but not all, healthcare for some but not all. UNACCEPTABLE!”
“Some members would receive less than a 0.50% wage increase.”
Your Bargaining Team: Alexis Dotts, Glen Steele, Gregg Barney, Heidi Strub, Jamie Fenton, Julianna Van Enk, Kelly Gusman, Kurtis Chaffin, Patricia Brown, Ryan Boyd, Sammy Bainivalu, Teri Kruse, Wanda Rodriguez-Ramos, Yvette Broeckel
Your Bargaining Team just finished three long back-to-back days of negotiations with MultiCare in the hopes of reaching a deal on a fair contract that would benefit all our members. Unfortunately, we concluded our last session just before midnight on June 24 without an agreement.
While we are pleased to report that there is a significant amount of money on the table, that money is not being distributed equitably amongst all employees. The employer’s last economic proposal did include large wage increase for some members; however, other members would receive less than a 0.50% wage increase. MultiCare will tell you that the average wage increase is high but there is a good chance you won’t get anything close to their average. The people at the top of the wage scale, who are the most experienced and dedicated employees, are the employees most likely to receive an insultingly low wage increase with the employer’s proposal.
Management is also demanding that the Union increase management’s control over our member’s wages. For example, management wants to have the authority to bring in new employees at a higher wage without having to increase the wages of all existing employees. Does that seem fair to you?
To make matters worse, the employer has refused to implement wages retroactively back to contract expiration (3/01/2021) and instead proposed an insulting $200 ratification bonus. They’ve also continued to reject our COVID-19 Hero Bonus proposal, refusing recognize the significant risks that healthcare workers and their families experienced on the front lines of the pandemic. In fact, never once has management acknowledged these risks during any of our bargaining sessions, as if they are pretending it never happened.
Your Bargaining Team has been working tirelessly to restructure our wage scale in a way that would help with the hiring and retention of workers, which would address the staffing issues that members have reported to be of the utmost importance. However, we must be very careful to make sure that any such changes would provide fair wage increases to all our members not only today, but into the future as well.
Apart from wages, members ranked the affordability and access of healthcare as a top priority on the bargaining survey. We have been fighting for months to address these problems with proposals to rein in the constant preimum increases and to make it easier for members to qualify for health insurance. Managament has shown an unwillingness to make any significant movement on healthcare, only agreeing to limit annual premium increases to no more than $40 more each month. That would mean management would have the right to raise your premiums rates by up to $120 a month by the end of a three-year contract.
In addition to the above, management is proposing the removal of President’s Day as a holiday, new PTO-ws language that makes it easier to lose PTO, elimination of the Respiratory Therapist incentive pay program, and other power grabs that would increase management’s control.
Do not trust management when they claim to be offering a good deal, what they are offering is unacceptable. In fact, their June 18 bargaining update to you included so many factual inaccuracies that the Union filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against the employer for lying to and misleading their employees. Now is the time to fight, time to show the employer that we will not accept an offer that leaves so many behind.
Our next bargaining dates are not until July 28 and 29, which are further away than we would prefer. We requested additional dates between now and July 28, but the employer never responded to our request.
You’re Invited! Rally @the Park
June 30, 2021 3:30PM
Wright Park, 501 South I St,
Tacoma, WA 98406
Join the UFCW 21 Bargaining Team, Pierce County Movement Builders, and community leaders for a Rally @the Park to support employees in at MultiCare who are currently fighting for a fair contract.
