Jefferson Healthcare RN - Management is Being Unreasonable

Our bargaining team met with management on December 28 to continue negotiations and worked into the early morning the following day. Although we were able to make some movement, we were disappointed with management’s economic proposal.

Management is proposing to cut into our medical leave by stripping away the protections that allows you to return to your position after recovering from a medical or maternal leave. A prospect that is even more unthinkable in the time of COVID.

They want to take away shift differential pay for day shift employees and some evening shift employees based on the timing of your shifts. This coming at a time when nearly everyone is already working well past their FTE due to staffing shortages and are feeling the emotional exhaustion and burnout that is hitting harder than ever. 

Management says they want to raise wages to be competitive in the market but seem fine leaving those who have put in the most time with Jefferson Healthcare behind by offering multiple wage proposals where nurses would make less money in each following year than they did the previous year.

Jefferson is telling us that this is the best they can do. This is unacceptable and NOW is the time to let them know that we will not stand for takeaways in our contract. We have worked hard to serve our community and patients during this unprecedented crisis, and it is unreasonable for Jefferson to expect us to do that and do it while they take even more from us than the last two years already have. 

Sign the Petition for Respect and Retention! 

https://bit.ly/jeffersonrn22

Please contact any of the Bargaining Team Nurses for details: Ben Schadler, RN ICU; Melanee Knudson, RN FBC; Jeannette Hundley, RN Surgical Services; Robin Bridge, RN ED

Update Your Contact Info

https://www.ufcw21.org/update-your-information

Jefferson HealthCare RN - Bargaining Team Update

We met with Management on Tuesday, October 26, and gave them our counter proposals. Their proposals have concentrated on the two “R” s, Recruitment and Retention, and we agree with these areas of focus. 

We have included a third “R”, Restructure, as we work through these negotiations.

Their initial wage proposal, designed to make for better Recruitment, only brought us to a little above the average of the hospitals they feel are our “market” and still behind 3 of the 6 hospitals, hardly competitive. Our proposal will make us above average and more likely to attract nurses to work here.

For the Retention part we refined their offer to better recognize our past experience when hiring and to allow for an appeal process for those that feel that they are at an incorrect wage step. 

We are trying to strengthen the Restructure process to give the hospital greater ability to cover the swings in acuity and census that we see every day, by defining Helper-Float RNs, Cross Trained RNs and to compensate us if we are floated outside the areas specified in the Restructure Letter of Understanding.

The hospital presented us with a counter proposal to a scheduling proposal we had given them in an attempt to improve the scheduling process, especially in the ACU.

Please contact any of the Bargaining Team nurses for details.

Our Jefferson Healthcare RN Bargaining Team: Ben Schadler, RN ICU; Melanee Knudson, RN FBC; Jeannette Hundley, RN Surgical Services; Robin Bridge, RN ED; Ryan DeGouveia, UFCW 21; Cathy Macphail, UFCW 21

Jefferson Healthcare RN - Management’s Priorities: Recruitment (& Retention?)

Last week the Union RN Bargaining Team made a full economic proposal which included sustainable across the board wage increases and significant improvements to premiums. The team also proposed strong contract language that would better define floating and cross-training. Other contract language would promote improved scheduling.

This week Management prefaced their proposal with a statement about the importance of “recruitment and retention.”

Management presented their economic “package” this week that seemed to emphasize recruitment with seemingly little regard to retention. Management’s proposal would increase wages for some pay rates significantly and others would receive less than a 2% increase in the first year. The lowest increases would include those nurses currently at or near the top of the pay scale. This proposal from Management did little to improve premiums and in no way addressed the huge staffing issues that have significantly impacted all nurses.

Management has also made a proposal to eliminate contract language for Medical Leave, which currently allows for up to six months of leave protecting the employee’s specific position (shift, FTE.) They are proposing to replace this leave with language deferring to state/federal leave laws (i.e. FMLA.) Most state and federal leave does not exceed 12 weeks. This is a huge reduction! Where is the respect Jefferson?

Please share this information with coworkers! Our next bargaining session is scheduled for Tuesday, October 19!

Our Jefferson Healthcare RN Bargaining Team: Ben Schadler, RN ICU; Melanee Knudson, RN FBC; Jeannette Hundley, RN Surgical Services; Robin Bridge, RN ED; Ryan DeGouveia, UFCW 21; Cathy Macphail, UFCW 21

Auburn Medical Center RN - Tentative Agreement Reached—Vote Scheduled

Your Bargaining Team has reached a tentative agreement with management on a new three-year collective bargaining agreement for Registered Nurses at Auburn Medical Center. We are very excited to tell you that this agreement includes the following: 

• UNPRECEDENTED WAGE INCREASES that would give Auburn Medical Center one of the highest RN wage scales in King County.

• INCLUDES FULL RETRO PAY BACK TO AUGUST 15, 2021!

• SOME OF THE HIGHEST PREMIUMS IN THE REGION! Increases to shift differential, standby pay, weekend premium, charge nurse pay, preceptor pay, and float pay.

• Maintained annual bonuses for members at the top of the wage scale. 

• New language that forbids the employer from forcing nurses to float to other hospitals,

• Improved charge nurse language allowing nurses to object to the assignment,

• No health care premium increases next year with caps in subsequent years,

• Permanently added the Spot Bonus Incentive plan into our contract,

• And so much more!

The full details of the offer will be made available during our online vote meeting on October 25.

Auburn Medical Center (RN) Online Meeting

Monday, October 25

6:00PM

Contact your Bargaining Team or Union Rep for call-in details. Details will be also emailed out.

It’s extremely important that members attend the zoom meeting to get a full understanding of the employer’s offer and have your questions answered. However, voting will not take place at this meeting.

We will be voting online via “SimplyVoting” on Tuesday, October 26 from 6:00AM to 8:00PM. You will be receiving an email from UFCW 21 via “SimplyVoting” with your unique login information. 

In order to vote, everyone needs to make sure their personal email is up to date in our records. If you did not receive this announcement via email, please visit ufcw21.org/update-your-information and update your information. If you do not receive an email to vote on Tuesday October 26, then please reach out to Union Representative Kent Tse at ktse@ufcw21.org no later than 5PM on the day of the vote to provide an updated email address. 

Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital RN - CONTRACT RATIFIED!

We’re excited to announce that nurses at Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital voted overwhelmingly to ratify their new contract on Tuesday!

If you have any questions about our next contract, please reach out to a Bargaining Team member or call Union Representative Kent Tse at (206) 436-6512.

CHI Virtual Health Services CONTRACT RATIFIED!

We excited to announce that members at CHI Virtual Health Services voted to ratify their new contract on Friday October 1! This historic contract includes a new wage scale that is competitive with neighboring employers, including MultiCare, which will help attract and retain staff.

We’ve informed the Employer of this news and they’ve said the new wages should go into effect no later than two pay periods after ratification. If you have any questions about your contract, please contact Union Representative Kent Tse at (206) 436-6512.

Jefferson Healthcare RN - Contract Negotiations Begin!

Our team of RNs from Jefferson have met with Management and started trading proposals.

Nurses have worked hard this last several months, short staffed and constantly being redeployed. The recent Covid surge has been challenging as well as the recent restructure of ACU/ICU and FBC/ED. 

The first proposals exchanged have been mostly non-economic changes to language including Non-Discrimination, distribution of Contracts and Job Descriptions, Use of Per Diems, release for Jury/Witness Duty, Discipline and Discharge. We are working on other language changes to improve our contract. In the coming weeks we are scheduled to meet each week to negotiate over these and other, more pressing issues, including total compensation, scheduling and benefits.

Future Bargaining Dates:

• October 5

• October 12

• October 19

• October 26

Our Jefferson Healthcare RN Bargaining Team: Ben Schadler, RN ICU; Melanee Knudson, RN FBC; Jeannette Hundley, RN Surgical Services; Robin Bridge, RN ED; Ryan DeGouveia, UFCW 21; Cathy Macphail, UFCW 21

Mary Bridge Children's Hospital RN - Tentative Agreement Reached

Our Bargaining Team has reached a tentative agreement with Management on a new three-year collective bargaining agreement for Registered Nurses at Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital. We are excited to announce that this tentative agreement includes:

• Historic wage increases

• Elimination of all ghost steps on the wage scale (steps with no wage increases),

• $500 ratification bonus, prorated by FTE,

• Increases to a number of wage premiums including shift differential, standby pay, weekend premium, charge nurse pay, and preceptor pay,

• Improved charge nurse language allowing nurses to object to the assignment,

• No health care premium increases next year with caps in subsequent years,

• And so much more!

We also added the spot bonus incentive program into this agreement; however, we were not able to maintain our current Appendix G incentive plan. In exchange, we were able to add more money in other portions of the agreement. It would also conform our incentive program with other MultiCare RN contracts, including Tacoma General Hospital.

The full details of the offer will be made available during our online vote meeting on Monday, October 4.

It’s extremely important that members attend the zoom meeting to get a full understanding of the employer’s offer and have your questions answered. However, voting will not take place at this meeting.

We will be voting online via “SimplyVoting” on Tuesday, October 5. You will be receiving an email from UFCW 21 via “SimplyVoting” with your unique login information.

In order to vote, everyone needs to make sure their personal email is up to date in our records. If you did not receive this announcement via email, please update your information HERE

If you do not receive an email to vote on Monday, October 5, then please reach out to Union Representative Kent Tse at (206) 436-6512 to provide an updated email address.

Trios Health - Sticker Up for Staffing

Our Bargaining Team proposed a Comprehensive Covid Vaccine Agreement that includes payout of PTO for employees who do not receive an exemption or the vaccine series and protections for all nurses. Through conversations with the Employer—we are pushing them to maintain the October 18 deadline to submit exemptions and proof of starting the vaccine series. We believe we will reach agreement before our next bargaining session on September 22 and will send out a copy to all nurses. 

Staffing, Safety, Recruitment, and Retention continue to be our leading issues—and all tied to the need for Trios to be market competitive with economics. We worked tirelessly to address issues with safety and floating and improve our current language and practices. 

Our first action to show widespread unity is a Staffing Sticker Action on September 21 and 22—the bargaining team stewards will be distributing stickers to each unit. Please wear stickers with pride both days in support of our next bargaining session on the 22. 

If you have questions about negotiations or vaccines, please reach out to your Union Representative Austen Louden, 509-340-7372. 

“The time for UNITY and SOLIDARITY is now—we will be taking action throughout September and October to send a strong message that Trios Nurses stand together for our patients and community. Join us in stepping up and speaking out.”

Our Trios Health Bargaining Team: Casey Nitta, Stephanie Weibel, Milari Olexa, Tami Ottenbreit, and Carol Goplen

MultiCare Auburn Medical Center RNs Bargaining Update

MultiCare Auburn Medical Center RNs: Bargaining makes some progress

“Our bargaining sessions do not appear to be a major priority on the Employer’s schedule” ― Our Bargaining Team: Cory Larsen, Kathleen Vukelich, Caroline Bellinger

We met with the Employer again on August 24 hoping for a more productive meeting than we’ve had in the past. Unsurprising, we were disappointed.

While the Employer did provide their first economic counteroffer, they have still failed to respond to a number of our other proposals that were provided to them over a month ago. This only adds to our frustration with Management after their delays on getting dates scheduled in the first place. The Mary Bridge nurses, whose contract was scheduled to expire the same day as ours, have had double the bargaining dates as we have had. Are we not a priority to MultiCare?

However, there is good news to report. Management’s first economic response was not bad, especially considering that an initial economic offer from an employer is usually insultingly low. Their proposal would put our wage scale at about market standard, slightly above the RN scale at a neighboring hospital. This is a surprising initial offer, but your Bargaining Team is pushing for a contract that will remain competitive over the next couple years.

Our Bargaining Team will meet with Management again on September 8, 14, 22 and 29.

Contract Action Team Meeting!

Join your Bargaining Team at our first virtual Contract Action Team (CAT) meeting on September 8 at 6:30pm. Hear the latest from negotiations, have your questions answered, and learn how you can help us win a fair contract.

September 8, 2021 6:30PM

MultiCare Auburn Medical Center RNs

Bargaining Team: Cory Larsen, Caroline Bellinger, Kathleen Vukelich

Our member Bargaining Team met with management on August 3 and 24 to kick-off negotiations.

We are frustrated that it took so long to get the employer to agree to these initial dates, which meant negotiations began only a few days before our contract was set to expire. We have signed an extension agreement to ensure that our contract remains in place, but we shouldn’t have had to wait so long to get this process started.

We presented our first proposal to the Employer on August 3, which included proposals to improve our existing language on issues regarding staffing, charge nurse assignments, accepting extra shifts, floating, and more. We also made a proposal to add the spot bonus incentive program to our contract.

The Employer provided a response to most of our proposals on August 24. While they did agree to some proposals that were already settled during the technical bargain, they pushed back on most everything else. For example, they wanted to strip out most of language that allows for members to report staffing concerns to administration without going through the staffing committee. While the staffing committing is a strong tool, we need to preserve alternative avenues for members who are not on the committee to have their concerns addressed.

Afterwards, we gave the Employer a comprehensive economic proposal. As we were crafting this proposal, we reviewed neighboring facilities such as Valley Medical Center who are direct competitors in the labor pool. Our proposal reflects the need to increase wages enough to ensure that management can easily attract and retain high quality staff at Auburn Medical Center.

We eagerly await the Employer’s response.

Our Bargaining Team will meet with management on August 24, then again September 8, 14, 22 and 29.

Mason General RN Contract Vote

Mason General RN Bargaining Update

Capital Medical Center RN - We Have Reached a Deal!

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.

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“Our hard work paid off and we received raises that are unheard of during these times.” 

— Bonnie Verellen, RN Women Services

“We deserve higher pay and we were able to win higher pay because we kept fighting.” 

— Sara McFarland, RN Ambulatory 

“We have never gotten 10% wage increases before on any contract.” 

— Scott Merrell, RN Emergency Department

Capital Medical Center RN - RN Bargaining Team Resumes Bargaining with CMC

The RN bargaining team has been in contract negotiations since November 2019. Historically the Capital Medical Center (CMC) RNs have received the same or similar agreement as the Providence St. Peter’s RNs, who are also part of UFCW 21. This past year CMC proposed to retire the EIB program, but withdrew that proposal after seeing that the Providence RNs authorized a strike. Management wanted to avoid a strike authorization from occurring at CMC.

In 2020, we continued bargaining and focused on wages. A lot of progress was made at the bargaining table, until March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic started. UFCW 21 and CMC held off on bargaining during this time in order to figure out how to bargain virtually and there was uncertainty of how the pandemic would affect CMC. Since then UFCW 21 has bargained virtually and demanded that CMC meet with us virtually. Due to CMCs delays and unresponsiveness, we were not able to meet until October 19.

On October 19, we resumed bargaining via Zoom and made a lot of progress. We currently have five articles we are discussing: union membership, wages, nurse staffing committee, continuing education funds, and duration of the agreement. Our next session will be on November 5 and we hope to obtain a good contract.

In addition, we have informed the community/elected officials about CMC’s delays during bargaining. They have signed onto a letter, supporting the RN unit.

We will be holding a meeting via Zoom on Thursday, October 22, 5:30 PM to 6:30 PM to discuss bargaining and short staffing at CMC. Please contact your union rep, Nicholas Hefling if you have any questions or concerns: nhefling@ufcw21.org, Cell @ 360-951-5801, or Office line @ 206-436-6564.

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“We made great strides and are getting close to an agreement.”

— Bonnie Verellen, RN

“We have stood firm on our priorities regarding wages, retro pay, and EIB. But in order to settle we have moved away from less important issues, which we will fight for in our next bargaining cycle.”

— Carol Cairone, RN

“We want to maintain competitive wages without takeaways from the contract.”

— Dennis Verellen, RN

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Join our Meeting!

Thursday, October 22
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM

Contact your Bargaining Team or Union Rep for call-in details. Details will be also emailed out.

Mason General (RN) - We Need Your Input

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We need your input!

There are some big decisions to make about what’s still on the table for bargaining. What is clear is that we need to take action.

Some of the sticking points:

• Management is trying to eliminate cash out of PTO

• Management wants to Low Census nurses in overtime first – even if it’s your regular shift

• Management doesn’t want to pay premiums with OT

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Join us at a Contract Action Meeting to develop our plan of attack!
Thursday, 10/22 @ 5 PM
Tuesday, 10/27 @ 5 PM

RSVP HERE for zoom link/call in information

Make sure you’re getting important union updates: Update your address, email, or phone number

If you have any questions, please contact your Union Rep @ 800-732-1188

Mason General RN Bargaining Update

Mason General RN - Management Continues to Dig in Heels on Overtime

We’ve been experiencing issues with overtime for work over 40 hours for years now. Even after a successful grievance (1), MGH still doesn’t believe we are owed time and a half for hours over 40 if we’ve incurred any other premium time during the week.

Pyramiding violations have continued, so we will be filing additional grievances. Contact your Bargaining Team members or Union Rep Nicholas to let us know if you’ve been denied OT for over 40 hours in the last year.

(1) View the Settlement Agreement Here

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Stay up to date! Update your information with us.

Mason General RN - Management Proposes Significant Takeaways

Management has proposed some alarming takeaways from our current contract:

• Eliminating cash out of Earned Time

• Eliminating Retiree Medical Coverage

• Eliminating Emergency Shifts

• Decreasing incentives to pick up additional shifts

Our Bargaining Team proposed an agreement for COVID policies – including hazard pay.

To win these important protections we need to hear from you! Take the COVID safety survey!

Forks Community Hospital RN - 100% “YES” VOTE! Forks Community Hospital RN Contract was ratified on June 22

We were able to win respectful wage increases that will allow us to recruit and retain good nurses for our community. We also added new and increased competency premiums while maintaining our benefits.

“We achieved our overall goal to raise our wages to be competitive with comparable healthcare facilities.”

Forks Community Hospital RN Bargaining Team