Mediation Update for 10/14/2025
Yesterday’s mediation was illuminating.
While the proposals from OHSU aren’t what anyone in our union would have hoped to see, we better understand where they stand and what is going to be necessary to get the contract that we deserve.
We had a long sidebar with management in the morning where we laid out our position and heard theirs. They insist that they’re in a unique and challenging financial position due to the changes and continuing uncertainty at the federal level, but it is hard to accept this with our own reviews of their public records and the employer’s history of claiming poverty every time we’re in bargaining.
This could be the time when they’re telling us the truth, but it’s hard to accept when money has appeared so miraculously in the past right after we’ve ratified the contract.
Our approach was to send OHSU a bulleted list of our proposals’ broad strokes to make it easier to review and do multiple passes in a day. While we also ironed out the roughly 80 pages of language, at this stage the mediator agreed it made sense to pass summaries until we’re closer to agreement.
Our pass didn’t show a lot of movement, instead presenting OHSU options to choose from to give us direction on how to proceed. As we said to the mediator, this was a smorgasbord and they could make choices but rejecting everything wasn’t an option.
OHSU’s response finally made significant movement on across the board increases. They told us this is close to their last, best, and final offer. They also moved on time off, but with a significant trade-off. They acknowledged that our last contract was groundbreaking and said they would not be able to match it, describing this offer as the second largest in the last twenty years.
Year 1 greater of $1.25 or 4% with a new minimum wage of $22.
Year 2 2.5% with a commensurate increase in the minimum wage ($22.55)
Year 3 2.5% with a commensurate increase in the minimum wage ($23.11)
From 12 to 19 hours of well-being leave, but
Vacation payout upon termination reduced from 300 to 80 hours.
No optional vacation cash-out.
Codify the existing 6% contribution to UPP in the contract.
Increased their one-time payment if we don’t call a strike from $1000 to $1250 for those with a .5 FTE or higher and $625 for those with less than a .5 FTE.
The removal of vacation cash-out was described as “cost neutral” with the increase in well-being leave.
This proposal was passed at about 7:30 PM last night and our team went home after a long day once OHSU made their presentation. We’ll spend the rest of this week discussing their proposal and deciding how to move forward next Tuesday.
It is clear that if we want more out of this contract, everyone in our union is going to need to stand together and demand it. If we want to see the kind of numbers we did in 2022, we have to show unity and solidarity. If OHSU doesn’t believe we’re in this together, then they’ve already given us as much as they’re going to.
Each team’s bullet pointed list is below (with small edits for clarity):
AFSCME Counters:
Economic pass:
Across the board increases - no change. Greater of $5 or 11% year 1, paid retroactively to July 1st and creating a $23 minimum, greater of $4.25 or 9% with a $27.25 minimum in year 2, greater of $4.25 or 9% in year 3. We can’t bargain against ourselves.
Time off: To continue to give OHSU more options to address our need for more time off as patients get sicker and we’re expected to do more with less, we are:
Holding on vacation.
Moved on accrual limit. Current contract language (CCL)
Matched pay upon termination to CCL accrual limit - you should get all of your hours when you leave.
Holding on sick time. Leaves room for you to decide what the best place is to move to cover this need.
Paid Bereavement Leave: Holding at 16 hours. Holding on our language for relief employees.
Holding on Indigenous Peoples Day floating holiday
Well-being leave: Holding at 12 hours. Holding on use after a holiday or vacation. Especially as this has been a replacement for sick time. Need to be able to use this time in smaller increments.
Re-introducing our proposal for Community Outbreak Leave.
This is a problem that needs a solution and we want to be sure we’re looking at every option that may be available.
Reject one-time payment. Our membership viewed this as a bribe and found it offensive.
Weekend differential: Agree to current contract language.
Preceptor Pay: Holding at $2.
Lactation break: Agree if accommodation is automatically approved. Language will need to be written by one of our teams.
Float pool: $2.
Float differential: Dropped.
ANI: Holding at 50% - agree to leave the name ANI based on our last conversation.
Trainer pay: Dropped differential, but still want to define trainer, trainee, training within the contract.
Short staffing/staffing stabilization: Holding for now as we’ve dropped other differentials and we have to discuss short staffing at the table. We need solutions.
Double back: Still some disagreements over specific language.
Holding on merit-based adjustments to try to address the merit-based increases problems in our current CBA.
On-Call: Agreed to most of this language but holding on receiving double straight rate of pay for hours worked on a holiday.
Bilingual differential: Would like to keep the broadening of the definition without the bonus.
Work out of Class: Mostly agreed to.
Insurance premiums: Holding at 95%. Would like more information about the costing on this. With this being a self-insured plan, this number could easily be manipulated.
Still asking for 3 insurance networks.
Retirement: Passed the same language as last time - minimum we can consider would be codifying our existing benefits.
No change in Appendix A.
No change in flex staffing in Appendix B.
EBC language matches what was passed at community table.
Dropping Service Recognition award.
Holding on our Training Trust ask.
Step and grade: Holding on our last pass as far as numbers go. Language is not included because we want to double-check the transition process to be sure all eventualities are addressed [this was passed a little later after an additional review with some changes regarding the transition process].
OHSU’s Counters:
8.1 First year percentage wage increase greater of $1.25 or 4% up from 3%.
Year 2 - 2.5%.
Year 3 – 2.5%.
Minimum wage will increase with second and third year increases, resulting in a minimum wage of $22.55 in Year 2 and $23.11 in Year 3
10.12 Preceptor pay $1.75 rather than $1.25
Wellness hours increased to 19 hours/year
12.6.1Pay upon termination reduced to 80 hours
12.6.3(b)Voluntary cashout deleted
Retirement – codify existing retirement benefits
MOU re One-Time Payment if no strike notice is issued, one-time payment increased to $1,250 for employees with an FTE between 0.5-1.0, and to $625 for employees with an FTE of less than 0.5.
If you’ve been waiting to get involved with our union, now is the time to step up in whatever way you can. Make sure your coworkers have signed their membership cards and their strike pledges. Wear green on Tuesdays. Become a steward. Attend any of our upcoming events that you can.
See our calendar of events under the “connect” button at the top of our website and follow us on social media for additional events and updates outside of our regular emails and other communications. We have several meet-ups over the next few weeks, building to our rally on October 30th.
This contract belongs to all of us and we can only see the kind of changes that we deserve by showing OHSU one, united front.
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