Mediation Update for 12/9/2025
Our bargaining team had another late night, ending a membership meeting at about 8 PM and continuing to work afterwards.
As detailed in the post about our limited time economic supposal, we passed a package to OHSU and made it clear that they needed to respond before the end of the day if we were going to have the chance to reach a tentative agreement before the holidays.
As we said yesterday, if we’re unable to reach an agreement then a strike becomes more likely and our demands may have to actually increase to offset what would be lost if a strike is necessary.
OHSU did not agree to the supposal and while there are still key areas where we are very far apart, their movement shows promise for what we can accomplish next Tuesday. In fairness to management, we gave them a monumental task and while they were unable to iron out every detail in their proposal or come to a tentative agreement, they engaged with us in good faith and a lot of progress was made.
The biggest takeaways are below:
OHSU is willing to raise the minimum wage for our members to $25 an hour over the course of the contract. We don’t have a schedule for this yet, but will attempt to iron out details and come to an agreement next week. This will be a 38.8% increase in our minimum wage.
No movement on wages outside of raising the minimum wage.
Year 1: $1.25 or 4%
Year 2: 3.25%
Year 3: 3%
Refused to add an Indigenous Peoples Day floating holiday, no additional vacation time, and no additional sick time.
Added an additional 2 hours of Well-Being Leave, bringing their proposal to 14 hours for full time employees and 6 hours for relief.
Held on their previous proposal for insurance plans for those outside of Oregon and Southwest Washington but management has meetings with stakeholders later this week to get input on creating a plan that would cover those outside of the Portland area that do not have reasonable access to our main campus. We are hopeful we can come to an agreement on this important benefit.
Attempted to address some of the issues in Appendix A, but not in a way that was as effective as they had hoped once we discussed them. There is additional work being done on management’s end to craft a response to this next week.
Agreed to 16 steps in the transition to Step and Grade (down from 17) but want to keep to their percentages. We have not reviewed the finer details as a team yet, so we haven’t properly compared our offers. This will be one of our tasks on Monday.
Agreed to our language allowing lactation periods to be taken on paid time.
There were also some great tentative agreements:
We are also very close to a tentative agreement on our protected leave package, which will ensure that anyone who is using their paid accruals or who has been sent home or is otherwise unable to work due to an OHSU policy will not receive an occurrence.
This will be life-changing for many of our members. Even those who have banked hundreds of sick hours are an illness away from burning through that time and having their employment put into jeopardy. We are proud of the progress we’ve made here and are confident we’ll have this language wrapped up next week.
We will have another work day on Monday so that we’re in a position where a tentative agreement may be possible on Tuesday, December 16th. With the holidays approaching, this is likely our last chance to wrap up the contract campaign before the New Year. The longer that negotiations continue, the more likely it is that our bargaining team will be forced to call for a strike.
If you want to read OHSU’s detailed response, you can find it here. OHSU has already agreed to changing some of this language and much of it is in flux, so what is in this document may not reflect their final position once we discussed the proposal in a sidebar yesterday evening.
Going forward, we will be focusing on having more membership meetings where our bargaining team can share their experiences and concerns and our members can open up without fear that the employer’s prying eyes might be watching. If you have a question, you can also reach us any time at bargaining@local328.org.
Watch this space and your inbox for future meetings and actions. Please sign and share our petition calling on President Elnehal to settle a fair contract now. This is your community’s chance to show their support for us, so please be sure you send it to your coworkers, friends, family, and anyone else who cares about frontline workers.