On November 5, the RN Bargaining Team met with the Hospital. After almost a year of bargaining, we were able to obtain a contract settlement! At the start of bargaining, we believed our biggest fight was going to be over maintaining EIB, like it was down the road at Providence St. Peter’s. The Hospital indicated that they would be following Providence St. Peter’s settlement, so we made the strategic decision to slowdown bargaining until the St. Peter’s RNs settled on EIB. That decision paid off when Providence St. Peter’s announced they would be maintaining the EIB program in January.
At that point, we continued bargaining and were focused on wages, increasing education reimbursement money, and improving contract language like floating and call-back pay. We were making some progress when the COVID-19 pandemic started. At that time, we could no longer bargain in-person and had to evaluate how to move forward. At all other tables, the employers agreed to bargain virtually via Zoom, but Capital Medical Center refused to bargain virtually for months.
Finally, in October we were able to resume bargaining and made a lot of progress. We moved away from some contract language proposals and focused on wages and retroactive pay. We insisted on retroactive pay, but the Hospital told us they would rather do higher increases than retroactive pay. When looking at the percentage increases, we determined that higher pay increases would result in more compensation than retroactive pay. In addition, the pay increases we won are higher than Providence St. Peter’s increases.
Our next step is to walk through the tentative agreement with the unit on Thursday, November 12 at 5:30 PM via Zoom. Due to COVID-19, we will be voting via mail. Ballots and vote documents will be sent out via standard mail and the documents will be posted on ufcw21.org. If you or your coworkers, do not received mail from UFCW 21 please contact your Union Rep, Nicholas Hefling nhefling@ufcw21.org so we can update your address and ensure you receive a ballot.
