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.
After holding nomination votes for the Labor Management Advisory Committee (LMAC) from September 21–25, 2026, and then holding nominee votes for Ballard, Central District, and Issaquah on October 21, 2026, we are happy to announce your committee members!
This agreement comes after more than six months of bargaining, an informational picket, federal mediation, a strike pledge campaign, and a strike authorization vote that showed CommonSpirit members were ready to fight for a better contract
After more than a month since our last session, our Union Bargaining Team; Alyssa and Oliver were able to reconvene with the employer on October 19 to receive their economic counter proposal.
Join us via Zoom on Tuesday, October 20, at 6:30 PM to learn more about the tentative agreement reached between our Union Bargaining Team and CommonSpirit.
“At a time when workers are struggling to keep up with sky-high prices for groceries, housing, health care, and other basic necessities, we cannot afford to give a tax cut to the wealthiest people in our state,” said Sam Dancy, UFCW 3000 Executive Board Vice President and Grocery Bargaining Team Member
Our member-led Bargaining Team met with representative from Puzzle Break to lay the foundation for the negotiations of our first union contract. We discussed guidelines around how proposals will be passed, Bargaining Team availability and our desire to have consistent and timely bargaining dates moving forward.
After months of difficult negotiations and a powerful show of solidarity, we have reached a tentative agreement on a new contract! Thanks to our collective strength, we secured significant improvements, including:
Please join us in person at the UFCW 3000 Des Moines office for Contract Action Team meetings on the following dates. We will be meeting in person at the union office, but for those who cannot join in person there will be an online option. During these meetings, will be sharing updates as well as creating picket signs for an upcoming info picket.
After months of difficult negotiations, a powerful informational picket, and an overwhelming strike authorization vote, our Union Bargaining Team fought late into the night on October 8 and reached a tentative agreement on a new contract!
The Nominations are in, now it’s time to vote for who will represent you and your coworkers from Ballard, Central District, and Issaquah PCCs on the newly formed PCC Labor Management Advisory Committee (LMAC). Secure online voting will take place Wednesday, October 21 from 8am to 8pm. Every PCC store elects one LMAC representative, you may only vote on a nominee from your own store.
Following a series of highly attended vote meetings on Monday, October 5, union technical workers at St. Joseph Medical Center voted nearly unanimously to:
Reject CommonSpirit’s subpar contract offer
Authorize a STRIKE
“We set the stage and gave our comprehensive proposal letting the employer know that our priorities are to win wages that we deserve, improve our transportation benefits, win immigration protection language as well as ensuring the safety of our co-workers. We are eager to see what BDA’s response is on the 21. ” -Kota Owens, Bargaining Team Member
After months of bargaining, we are happy to announce that a vote on the RT Career Ladder has been scheduled. The full agreement will be available at the vote.
Read MoreOn Wednesday, April 1, our Union Bargaining Team representing the Pharmacists at St. Joseph Medical Center met with Management for our ninth session of contract negotiations. Following several weeks since our most recent bargaining date before today- we started off the morning eager to hear Management’s response to the end-of-day package we’d presented last session.
Read MorePlease join us, in-person or virtually, for the 2026 Union Bargaining Kick Off Meeting!
Read MoreAt our second day of contract negotiations, Tuesday, March 31, our Bargaining Team met with Management to continue working on the non-economic sections of our Collective Bargaining Agreement. We feel we made pretty good progress so far on topics such as the New Employee Orientation, and language which better accommodates PTO request & approval timelines for workers in departments with four (4) week schedules as well as six (6) week schedules.
Read MoreOn March 26, our Union Bargaining Team met with the Hospital to discuss pending proposals, both non-economic and economic. The Hospital delivered their non-economic counterproposals in the morning, and our team responded right after lunchtime. Our non-economic counters were presented as a package.
Read MoreOur bargaining session on March 30 was extremely productive as Management responded to the movement of our proposals with significant movement of their own. We were able to reach Tentative Agreements on a wide range of topics and are really narrowing down on the topics left.
While we made a lot of progress, the employer still did not present a wage scale and continued to insist that their market analysis was the best way to determine the raises that we would get throughout the term of the contract. Kimberly Vetter did an amazing job of addressing the employer’s points and countering them with data and anecdotal evidence. She didn’t back down from any of the employer’s challenges and stood her ground in a calm and collected manner.
Read MoreOur 13 bargaining session saw the introduction of our mediator, Dan Hickey, who sat down with our Bargaining Team and Management before we presented our proposal to Management at 9:30am. By far, our team feels that this was the most productive session we have had with Management. We reached several Tentative Agreements and had positive movement from both sides on both economic and non-economic issues. We have distributed a petition to show support for the Bargaining Team, please be on the lookout for it and sign it when you can. Our next bargaining date will be on April 20. We are looking forward to the progress we can continue to achieve with a mediator on board.
Read More
We came together with thousands of our UFCW siblings to vote YES!
Our new four-year contract with Kaiser Permanente has been ratified by an overwhelming majority of votes! Because of our countless Solidarity Tuesdays, petitions, speaking out in our communities and in the news, we won a historic UFCW-wide contract that delivers:
21.5% ATB wage increases (plus additional increases for many Union members)
Improved PSP formula
Regional Equity
Contract alignment across all of UFCW (nine separate expiration dates will be aligned into one common expiration date)
Additionally, at our local tables, we won:
Premium and Differential Increases
Increased Time for Grievance Filing
Staffing Concern Documentation Process for Pharmacy
Contract Language for Joint Committees on Career Ladders and Eyecare
This hard-fought victory was only possible because we stuck together with our KP siblings across our facilities, our locals, and our UFCW international. Together, we are over 12,000 strong, and we demonstrated our power at the bargaining table, on the strike lines, and at our workplaces to achieve this win.
Effective Monday, March 30, 2026, we will return to full participation in partnership activities, where we'll begin discussions on how we can reconstitute, clarify, and strengthen the Labor Management Partnership between the Alliance and all of its member unions and Kaiser Permanente. We'll keep you posted on what that will look like moving forward.
Another important change moving forward is that all issues that were previously handled nationally will now be included in local agreements. This means local Bargaining Committees will have greater control over the issues that most affect members in their facilities and regions, while still coordinating with other Alliance unions when needed.
This campaign was unlike any we've run before, and because of the strength and solidarity we showed this time around, we're only going to be that much stronger when we come back to the table in four years. Kaiser has shown that they are willing to go to extremes to keep us from getting the contracts we deserve. So stay ready, stay united, and stay connected with your coworkers and your KP siblings across facilities, locals, and the country. Together, we're more powerful than ever!
If you have any questions, please reach out to your Bargaining Committee Member, Steward, or Union Rep.
In Solidarity,
Your Kaiser Permanente Bargaining Committees
On Thursday, March 26, our Union Bargaining Team met with the Employer for our first day of union contract negotiations. In preparation for our first day this cycle, our team met earlier in the month to review feedback from bargaining surveys, recent wins in other union contracts, and conducted a review of our current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) to pinpoint areas for improvement.
Read More
On Thursday, March 19, and Monday, March 23, our Union Bargaining Team representing the Registered Nurses at Mason General Hospital met with management for our first two days of negotiations, following our agreement to open the contract for early negotiations. In preparation for our first two days, our team met on March 13 to review feedback from the bargaining surveys, identified our top contract priorities, and conducted a review of our current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) to pinpoint areas for improvement.
Most importantly, we felt it was critical to work diligently to get most (if not all) of our proposals into management's hands as early into negotiations as possible in the hopes of reaching agreement and getting competitive wages implemented as soon as possible. During our first session, we provided Mason Gen with the vast majority of the proposals we expected to make throughout negotiations (in fact, the only outstanding item—which we presented on our second day with management—was to align the consecutive weekend pay to other proposals we'd already shared), including:
Increases to the cross-trained RN premium—including additional compensation when cross-trained RNs are floated consistently during their normal FTE
New language to reduce the inconsistency and inconvenience the L/C "call-blocks" create
New language to require advance notice for nurses who are scheduled outside of their normal shift rotation, in conjunction with how Earned Time and other time-off may be submitted and used for these days
And compensation proposals, like:
Wage scales designed to keep our wages competitive with Olympia-area rates
Premiums; Standby, Charge, Callback (minimum guarantees), and a new premium for nurses who come in on their time off to perform a PICC
Following this proposal on the 19th and into our session on the 23rd we exchanged proposals with the Employer—which included their responses to our initial proposals and counters to new proposals from their team. While the Employer didn't respond to our compensation proposals just yet, they did propose economic proposals of their own, including reference to the pay-in-lieu-of-benefits differential for part-time workers—which management later hinted at as giving way to a forthcoming proposal to remove the benefit entirely. This was concerning to our Bargaining Team of course, knowing that this benefit is utilized by RNs who likely retain their health insurance elsewhere, and removing this language would result in an RN paying for potentially duplicate health insurance premiums and suffering a reduction in pay at the same time!
Because the Employer has not yet formally proposed removing this benefit, our teams did not actively discuss this prospect across our first two sessions, but we are looking forward to continuing these conversations—and more—during future negotiations dates!
Bargaining Team: Nancy Ownby, RN; Megan Corbin, RN; Tori Willis, RN
If you or a coworker are not receiving updates from our Union, please update your contact information >>
If you have not yet signed up to be a member of our Union, click here to fill out a membership application!
Our Bargaining Team worked diligently across several prep sessions to finalize all of our proposals, which we then presented at our initial session on March 4; this included both non-economic (including clarifiers on our Just Cause protections, equal opportunity language, and the PTO approval process and holiday work rotations), as well as economic (like premiums, differentials, health insurance benefits, and of course- wages!) sections.
Read MoreOur Bargaining Team came to the first session prepared and ready to get to work. On day one, we presented non-economic proposals including clear language on PFML, Union leave for stewards, successorship language that protects our rights in case of a sale or acquisition of hospital,), and more.
Read MoreWe met with the Employer on March 17 and had a productive session. The Employer presented their proposal at 9:30am. We worked hard throughout the day and came back with a proposal for them at 4:00pm. We have made significant progress through the contract and are coming down to the final topics, which are always the hardest.
Read More
Bargaining Team: Marilyn Faber, Union Rep; Cindy Tjaden; Isabel Contreras; Kalisa Dolph; Britney Myers-Fuller; Ashley Price; Briana Hovsepian; Graydon Hingey; Michael Koenig; Annalise Pasillas; Elizabeth Major; Alina Delano; Micheal Schwartz; Daniel Booker (Hospice of the Northwest)
On March 13, 2026, our team met with the Hospital to discuss topics that are viable for our contract campaign. All conversations around these topics were held on multiple sidebars. A sidebar is a discussion between two to three Bargaining Team members (usually the lead negotiators and a small group of their team members). The conversation takes place away from the bargaining table and is off the record. They are often used to clarify questions or share information.
The following topics were covered on those sidebars:
Clinic Maintenance—we are asking that this classification be created and incorporated into the wage scale.
Donning and Doffing (D&D)/Grace Period—we have asked for more flexibility around D&D and further clarification of the grace period to avoid situations created by the inability to navigate the current punch-in and out system.
Interpreters—we have informed the Hospital that we do not want to lose any bargaining-unit positions. Still, we are willing to work with SRH to create greater flexibility around the languages needed for interpretation.
Credit for current workers—we have identified that some of our coworkers did not receive the proper placement on the wage scale based on their experience. We have asked the Hospital to create a window after ratification for workers to submit evidence and ask for credit recognition.
Variables—this is a topic where we have been extremely straightforward with the Hospital from day one: the current system must change. We have asked the Hospital to work with us to create a path to minimize the number of variables.
Social Worker of the Day (Non-Hospice)—we submitted a demand for bargaining on this, and the Hospital confirmed they have stopped this practice. They are finding out more information on the intent.
Hospice MOU—we are working with the Hospital to incorporate the Hospice Aid and Spiritual Counselors into the existing Hospice Social Worker MOU. In addition, we explained in depth the reason we are asking for parity for these two classifications.
Rest and Meal Periods—we are working with the Hospital to create an improved system that aligns with current law, specifically regarding the availability of waivers for eight-hour workers and the ability to combine paid breaks with unpaid breaks. We are committed to ensuring that the Hospital follows the law and makes the necessary changes to the current system.
In addition to the topics covered in the sidebars, we turned in our last non-economic set of proposals. At this point, the Employer has all our proposals in their hands. We expect they will return with their counterproposals on the next bargaining day, March 26, 2026.
We are holding nothing back on our side—the only thing holding back the ratification of this contract at this point is the Employer! We are even willing to work late into the night to push this through.
We encourage everyone to stay informed and keep showing your unity in the workplace!
The most important action at this moment is for all of us to sign the Community and Worker petition for competitive wages and safe, stable scheduling. Please take a moment to sign and share with all your coworkers, family, and friends! Our goal is to deliver the petition to the Board of Commissioners this month.
Our next bargaining date is March 26 and will be joined by a mediator for dates in April.
If you have questions or would like to get more involved in organizing a fair contract, please reach out to your Union Rep, Marilyn Faber, at 1-866-210-3000, EXT. 4678.
On March 13, we received the Employer’s response and reached Tentative Agreements on several premiums and a shorter period for status review. We spent the rest of the day preparing counters to the Employer’s proposals. Our team prioritized the remaining articles left on the table and we are ready to present a counter on wages at our next bargaining date: March 27.
Read MoreAfter months of bargaining, we are happy to announce that contract votes have been scheduled.
Read More
Your OMC Pro-Tech Bargaining Team met for the first day of negotiations. Although the session looked different than expected because members of the management team were out sick, your Bargaining Team made the most of the time and stayed focused on the work ahead.
Rather than lose valuable time, the Bargaining Team used the day to work together on a strong and comprehensive proposal package. This gives us the opportunity to come back to the table at our next session ready to present management with clear priorities and thoughtful proposals that reflect the needs and concerns of Pro-Tech workers.
Our Bargaining Team remains committed to pushing forward and making every bargaining day count. We will continue to keep members updated as negotiations move ahead.
If you have questions, reach out to your Bargaining Team.
Bargaining Team: Josh Johnston, Jake Purvis, Sandra Caudill, Hector Pozernick
Our Bargaining Team had a productive first day at the table, presenting management with a non-economic proposal package and beginning work on economic issues.
Day two looked different than expected because management was out sick. Even so, the Bargaining Team used the time to develop a comprehensive proposal package to present at the next session.
We remain focused, prepared, and committed to moving this process forward. We will continue to keep members updated as bargaining progresses.
If you have questions, please reach out to the Bargaining Team: Justin Parks, Tilly Richards, Danielle Green
We met with Management for our first bargaining session. The time we spent preparing prior to bargaining allowed us to be ready to meet and present early. We made initial proposals which included union security, union access to nurse lounges, paid time for stewards to represent their coworkers in investigatory meetings, defining the role of break relief nurses, strengthening the definition of precepting, shortening the probation time for introductory nurses, severance pay for layoffs, improvements to bereavement leave, and more.
Read MoreOn March 10, our bargaining committee met again with Recovery Cafe hoping to make significant progress to reach a tentative agreement. We know our core issues are meaningful wage increases, transparency from our Employer, and addressing the high cost of healthcare for our coworkers with dependents.
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.
