Mediation Update for 6/24/2025
This week counts as mediation but the mediator was not present. OHSU and our union still met and exchanged proposals, both teams working to get as much cleared as we can.
Reminder that our union and APU are having a rally this Friday! The best way to support this contract campaign and demand a great contract is to show OHSU that we’ll show up for each other.
Big takeaways from today:
Our union has again requested that we have 40 hours of paid bereavement leave.
OHSU has moved significantly on Article 2, giving us access to more stewards, steward hours, and giving additional time for our officers to do their union work.
We are close to a tentative agreement on future bargaining teams getting an extra day per week to work on getting us a great contract much sooner than we have in the past.
AFSCME Counters:
5.19 Onboarding: Resubmitted with a small update to make it explicit that what we see as onboarding is very narrow in scope and doesn’t qualify for preceptor or trainer differentials. Hopefully after recent discussions, OHSU better understands our intentions with this language.
5.23 Preceptor: Clarified that if you’re precepting, that doesn’t mean you can’t also be onboarding someone (teaching them their clinical skills but also showing them where the bathroom is - they don’t cancel each other out) and referenced our updated 5.19 above.
7.7 Double Back: Left in the rest option that OHSU added back in during their previous pass and updated the work option so that it is paid at time and a half. Cut the example that no longer applied to the updated language.
9.2.1 Compensation Rate: Return to current contract language and accept a minimum pay of two hours - this matches ONA’s contract.
10.6 Bilingual differential: We are close. This language would give us the same language that ONA uses and should make it so that more of our members qualify. We changed the relief look back period to six months instead of one year and we opened it up so that people would also get the differential if they’re providing services internally or in non-clinical settings.
14.1.8 Bereavement Leave: We resubmitted our counter for 40 hours but dropped our request that hours roll over into the next calendar year.
14.2.4 Bereavement Leave: Removed “with manager’s approval” and added “will not be unreasonably denied.” Added “observance of cultural or religious traditions” to cover those whose practices fall outside of the established 60 day window.
14.4.2.1 Denial of additional bereavement leave days: Resubmitted our request that a worker be entitled to having a steward or other support person in any meetings regarding a denial. OHSU asked for some clarifications and better understands this language.
MOU 6: Services for Employees Whose Primary Language is Not English: OHSU passed this in our first session and we passed back with a small tweak in the second. We may have a tentative agreement here.
OHSU Counters:
23.7, 23.X, MOU’s X Admin Leave Package: OHSU has agreed to most of this language and while they believe we’re close to having a tentative agreement, it required a lot of discussion at the table. They’re in agreement that the uses of unpaid administrative leave must be defined, but the language is still too unclear and broad.
The other provisions in this language that have been agreed on will give our membership much more protection from the whims of malicious managers and our union will have tools to track who is on leave and why in a way that we haven’t before. Abuse should be both more limited and much more easily found when it does happen.
MOU 6 Services for Employees Whose Primary Language is Not English: OHSU says we agree in concept but tweaked the language around discipline. They passed this during the first joint session and we passed it back with minor changes later in the day.
MOU X Consensus Agreement Reporting: In theory, current contract language makes this unnecessary. In practice, these have not been tracked properly in the past and both OHSU and AFSCME have incomplete lists. OHSU changed this to a task force that will track down all existing consensus agreements and establish a better process for the future. Since neither team has the full picture, this will be a joint effort.
Article 2 Union Provisions: OHSU showed significant movement on this article, though there are still issues we will continue to work to resolve.
2.2.1 Reasonable Access: They still resist allowing union stewards to be given the same rights to see members on paid time that union staff have.
2.3 Release time for Union Officers: OHSU agreed to most of the expansions we requested for union officer hours. They rephrased things a bit (we have always called out how many hours our union will pay for and OHSU only sees a need to list what they’re obligated to pay for) and made all of the officer hours prorated by FTE.
President: 40 hours per week minus 1 regular work shift.
Vice-President: 20 hours per week.
Secretary and Treasurer: They agreed to release them for 10 hours per week, but these would all be paid by our union.
2.4 Union Stewards: Also agreed to many of our changes here.
1040 annual release hours for the Chief Steward (up from 832). Half is still paid by our union.
Change from 1 to 5 senior lead stewards.
Change from 11 lead stewards to 1 lead per 500 employees (this would immediately give us 17 upon ratification)
No change to the number of hours of release time for leads and senior leads.
Stewards and unit stewards no longer separated and all receive 50 hours.
Time reporting must be done during the same pay period when the steward time was taken. This meets their reporting requirements.
Total steward hours increased from 3,800 to 6,494 (from roughly 30 minutes per bargaining unit employee at the time this number was put into place to 45 minutes per current bargaining unit employee) with a provision to review this annually to increase the number of hours as our union grows.
They pushed back on “and shall not be unreasonably denied” in the language detailing how an individual can request additional steward hours.
Agreed to extend the distance a steward can travel in the regular course of their duties to 15 miles with better language surrounding exceptions to that rule for specific types of cases like stewards supporting members who are subject to a for cause drug test.
2.7 New Employee Orientation: Agreed to our request that up to 3 people be released for NEO. We had a discussion about possibly releasing other member leaders or people who might be interested in helping with NEO but might be at the limit for stewards in their department. OHSU said they would get back to us, so there’s room for discussion here.
2.9 Bargaining Unit Data: OHSU still pushed back on our demand that we be given basic info about how many traveler and agency workers OHSU is using. Management had an honest discussion with us about this information being very difficult to obtain since it is currently only kept at a per department level (requests may be aggregated, but number hired is apparently not). They’ve had trouble acquiring this information for their purposes, so it is difficult for them to commit to. We made it clear that this is a problem for all of their bargaining units and even if the information isn’t currently centralized, that answer isn’t going to continue to be acceptable.
2.11 Union Communications: OHSU is okay with increasing frequency to once per week but has concerns with membership drives being done from and to internal sources due to outside actors filing bad faith lawsuits related to union activities. We have serious concerns over this language because of how easily it could be interpreted that a steward sending an everyday email could be seen as having violated the contract. We’ll continue working on this language.
2.13 Union Leave: Agreed to 6 people being on lost time at once (currently limited to 5) but want to keep the “every 3 years” rule and are resistant to our proposal to change the amount of time you can be out based on how you take your leave. We proposed 90 days in a block or 180 days if taken intermittently. They stated it’s too difficult to track who is on what type of leave accurately, so want there to be a single standard.
2.X Union Officer Leave: Agreed to this language that would allow someone to use lost time without it counting towards our union’s limit if they’re elected to state-wide or national union office.
2.X Additional Officers Limited Reopener: OHSU is still not comfortable with this language as they consider it too vague to agree to in advance.
29.2 Negotiations for a New Contract: OHSU agreed to future negotiating teams having an extra day of bargaining to caucus and hopefully get us to a new contract much more quickly than we have in the past (and during this campaign). They cut some extraneous references to Oregon law that weren’t needed and cut language that would set the final day for passing new language. Future teams can work that out together when establishing their ground rules. This is a huge win and likely to be a Tentative Agreement very soon.
Be sure you come to our rally this Friday. We love your comments here, but we’d love them even more when you can see most of our bargaining team in person.
Your support is how we’ve gotten everything we’ve won so far and how we’re going to end this campaign with the contract you deserve.
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