Mediation Update for 8/19/2025

Today’s mediation showed a great amount of movement on both sides of the table.

OHSU passed 4 packages where they made concessions on Article 2: Union Provisions, scheduling, and the consensus process.

Our team has organized the things that are still in our court into 6 main priorities:

  • Living wage

  • Appendix A

  • Leave time

  • Benefits

  • Retirement

  • Safe Staffing

Today, we passed 2 of those 6 packages and will have the others completed over the next 1-2 weeks.

Our living wage package included another pass at the step and grade system and clarified positions where we could and could not move. We also made a significant move on our wage proposal, cutting more than $210 million in costs while still getting our lowest paid workers to a living wage in the second year of our contract.

We have moved from $10 to $5 as our minimum raise in the first year of the contract and from $5 to $4.25 as our minimum raise in years 2 and 3. Under our proposal, no one will receive less than an 11% raise in year 1 and a 9% raise in years 2 and 3.

  • Year 1: The greater of $5 or 11%

  • Year 2: The greater of $4.25 or 9%

  • Year 3: The greater of $4.25 or 9%

Movement is a necessary part of negotiating in good faith. We started with the wage we hoped to see and moved towards the wages we need and deserve.

Our proposal for Appendix A addressed many of management’s concerns with our previous draft and better laid out a system to minimize the exploitation of our salary workers.

AFSCME Counters

Living Wage Proposal: This package included many of our economic asks, bundled together to help OHSU understand where we could move and could not move. This is a rare package proposal from us, where we explicitly stated what we were moving on and what we expected in return.

  • Appendix B Conditions of Flex Staff Employment: We continue to hold on current contract language.

  • MOU 8 Hardship Fund: We moved from our original ask of $500,000 to $450,000 and told management that if they can ensure that our members are financially stable, this hardship fund won’t be as necessary and we can move further.

  • Step and Grade Transition: We continue to work to get this down to a small disagreement about specific numbers. Our proposals are not far apart and either should result in both an immediate pay increase and more pay over the course of our careers.

    • We agreed to OHSU’s request that this take place in July, 2027. It will take a minimum of 12-18 months to implement a change of this scale and giving them that extra time seems reasonable to our team.

    • We moved slightly on structure, stating we want to see 3% between pay grades. We had originally asked for 4%, but 3% more closely matches the existing hourly pay scale. We continue to want to see a 15 step scale while OHSU has proposed an 18 step scale.

    • We agreed to letting go of the term “longevity” since it’s now built into both versions of the pay scale that have been proposed. Both OHSU and AFSCME have 5 years of additional steps at the end of our scales that will be a great improvement over our current longevity language. These are included in our 15 step scale and OHSU’s 18 step scale.

    • We continue to push back on freezing the pay of the very small number of people that are above the pay for their grades.

    • We agreed to allowing the Trade pay scales (T10 through T30 on the current compensation plan) to be placed based on their midpoint, but were explicit that this can’t lead to people in those grades being paid less or their new hires being paid less. For example, since they have a shorter scale we don’t want a new hire in 2027 to start at a lower rate than they would have received in 2026. This may be addressed by the provision that states that employees will be placed on the step that corresponds with their experience. We’ll continue to work together on this.

    • We re-proposed our version of the conversion for the salary pay scales because OHSU’s lacks some basic details we feel are needed to outline how it will go. We’ll be talking more about this in the coming weeks with them as we share an interest in making this a fair and orderly transition.

    • OHSU had proposed defining the system in an MOU related to the transition, but we feel the scales should be defined in the contract. This allows us to tweak them in the future if either party finds that the new system isn’t working as well as we’d hoped and ensures that if new grades are added, they can just follow the structure laid out in the contract.

    • AFSCME held that upward reclassifications and promotions should continue to be a minimum of 4%. We explained to management that in the majority of situations, people will be moved more than one grade (each grade is separated by 3% in our current proposal), so this would happen automatically. But we want to be sure that in odd one-offs, our members aren’t losing any rights they currently have.

  • MOU 15 Recommendations to Market Based Wage Committee: Other than the changes to bring it in line with the new step and grade system, we are holding at current contract language.

  • MOU X Certification and Licensure Renewal Program: We agreed to drop this proposal to push forward Advanced Certification Pay.

  • MOU 29 Advanced Certification Pay: AFSCME re-proposed the language we last passed and also sent recommendations from the committee that met over the course of our last contract to create this program.

  • Across the Board Increases: Finally, our team made the difficult decision to move on our wage proposal. This is still significantly more than we’ve asked for in the past and is focused on bringing our lowest paid workers up to a living wage. While our initial proposal would have brought the bottom of the scale up to MIT’s living wage in year 1, we’re now seeing that in year 2. If passed, no one in our bargaining unit will see less than an 11% raise in year 1 and a 9% raise in years 2 and 3.

    • Year 1: The greater of $5 or 11%

    • Year 2: The greater of $4.25 or 9%

    • Year 3: The greater of $4.25 or 9%


Appendix A

  • Shift work definition: One of the biggest issues our workers have with Appendix A is that there are so many people doing shift work that is hourly in every way except pay and access to breaks and lunches. We need to better protect these members without changing things drastically for the people working more traditional salary shifts. We added the following to hopefully carve out an exception for the salary workers who are being exploited:

    • “For purposes of this appendix, shift work is defined as a system where employees work at different times throughout the day and/or night and can be outside of the traditional 9-5 hour work-day, for the purposes of ensuring continuous operations or services for a department or work-unit. These shifts may be fixed or rotating, and include on-call scheduling. Shift workers do not have independent decision making ability in determining their hours of work.”

  • Accrual of Vacation Time: Our team made the difficult decision to move from our original vacation ask for salary employees. This is only the rate for salary employees. Hourly employees will be addressed separately.

    • Years 1-5: Currently 16 days - we requested 24 and have moved to 20.

    • Years 5-10: Currently 18 days - we requested 27 and have moved to 23.

    • Years 10-15: Currently 20 days - we requested 30 and have moved to 26.

    • Years 15-20: Currently 22 days - we requested 33 and have moved to 29.

    • Years 20+: Currently 25 days - we requested 35 and have moved to 33.

  • We continue to reject OHSU’s proposal to review all salary positions and determine whether they should be salary or hourly by July 1, 2026.

  • AFSCME added back our provision that states workers engaged in shift work (as defined above) will be eligible for overtime.

  • We tweaked the process to go from hourly to salary, stating that anyone making this change would receive a minimum of an 11% raise. This is due to how quickly the extra hours that salary workers are expected to work add up. Someone working just 4 extra hours a week loses out on 15% of what their pay would be if they were hourly.

  • AFSCME added back our proposal to create a way for employees to make a one-time move from salary to hourly.

  • We added back our proposal to tweak how seniority points are calculated for salary employees to better reflect the extra hours they are expected to work. This would give anyone working a .75 or more FTE points based on a 1.0 status. Anyone working up to a .74 FTE would receive points based on a .75 status.


OHSU Counters:

All of OHSU’s counters today were packages, which means we would need to accept all of them, as written. This doesn’t mean we can’t counter with our proposed changes, but the things they’re agreeing to are contingent upon us agreeing to the portions where there’s still disagreement. Now that we’re in mediation, we’ll see more of this kind of trading back and forth.

Article 2: The two remaining issues are whether members can meet with stewards on paid time regarding grievances the same way they can union staff (which would not be a change - this is current contract language) and what information OHSU is willing to provide regarding travelers and other temporary workers.

They have proposed a package deal where they agree to our data requests if we move on compensated time for processing a grievance.

Consensus Package: OHSU moved on many of the articles in this package. Here are the agreed upon articles:

  • 5.5.c

  • 5.5.d

  • 5.5.f

  • 5.5.g

  • MOU X Consensus Agreement Reporting

The differences are summarized below:

  • 5.5 Consensus: They crossed out our language allowing staffing plans for departments that don’t fall under the Safe Staffing Committee to this language.

  • 5.5.a: They crossed out “group” and replaced with “unit,” stating this will make it more accurate and more consistent across the contract.

  • 5.5.b: OHSU crossed out our language limiting to no more than two representatives from management from ad-hoc committees under this provision. They stated that this was to accommodate larger departments.

  • 5.5.e: OHSU moved on other language that would allow AFSCME to reject agreements in exchange for keeping the ability for either party to rescind a new agreement within 30 days. They feel this is important in case a department comes to an agreement that Labor Relations or AFSCME finds to be problematic.

Protected Leave Package: OHSU made a lot of movement here as well. Below are the articles where there’s still disagreement:

  • 5.12 Extended Medical Leave: OHSU states they need to maintain the right to grant Extended Medical Leave in their sole discretion since there are so many ways that an employee is able to take protected leave outside of this. Things like FMLA are outside of the employer’s control and give employees more options.

  • 5.X Protected Medical/Sick Leave: OHSU reworded our requirement that pre-approved medical appointments be covered. They rejected our requirement that any absence due to following the employer’s policy be covered. Our union’s proposal was that all time off covered by sick time accruals be considered protected leave. OHSU agreed to the first 56 hours of accrued sick time per year being considered protected leave.

  • 5.X Occurrence: OHSU rejected our language regarding half occurrences and some of our specifics. They believe the flexibility of the current language is a strength as some departments are more flexible than others due to the type of work that they’re conducting.

  • 23.3.5 When Attendance is the Issue: The employer partially agreed to our language that would protect time that an employee is away because of an OHSU policy (serious illness exposure for an employee who works with immuno-compromised patients, for instance), but only when they use their accruals.

  • MOU 27 Sick Leave Occurrences: OHSU proposed we carry this MOU from last contract forward to complete the work we began to overhaul the sick leave policies and procedures.

Scheduling Package: OHSU agreed to many of our provisions from previous passes. Here’s a summary of the articles they are willing to agree to as part of the package:

  • 7.2 Scheduling of work

  • 7.3.6 Changes in reporting time

  • 7.3.6.a Up to two hours

  • 7.3.6.b More than one hour, up to two hours

  • 7.3.6.d Non-applicability of section

  • 7.5.2 Agreed to cutting this language.

  • 7.5.3 Overtime limitations: Agreed that overtime limits would be based on consecutive or non-consecutive hours. This is a huge win for our workers as this means that someone who works more than 16 hours in a 24 hour period will receive double time, even if there’s a break in those hours.

  • 7.5.4 Mandatory Assignments of Non-overtime Work

  • 7.5.5.d Mandatory Assignments of Overtime

Below are the articles where there are still disagreement: 

  • 5.33 Relief Employee: Agreed to most of our language, but maintain current contract language stating that relief employees must provide availability “as determined according to the Employer’s needs.”

  • 7.3.6.c More than two hours: Maintained current contract language about time and one-half applying to all time worked “before or after their regularly scheduled shift.”

  • 7.5 Availability of Additional Work: Returned current contract language that guarantees someone can’t earn overtime during a week where they’re using vacation.

  • 7.5.1 Shifts becoming available after the schedule is posted: Assigns shifts using a 7 day rolling period where the first 72 hours are based on seniority and then the work can be assigned first come, first served. This was based on a discussion we had last week and aligns well with a concept we gave them. We’ll look closely before agreeing, but this appears to be a positive step.

  • 7.5.5.c Mandatory Assignments of Overtime Work: Removed AFSCME’s provision that would have mandatory overtime paid at overtime rate plus the highest ANI offered to recruit for the shift.

  • 7.5.5.e: Management moved on our proposal to ensure that no one who works mandatory overtime incurs parking fines. They state there’s not an automated way to keep those fees from being assessed, so they laid out the process an employee would take to have their fees waived and committed to making it standard practice.

Temporary Worker Package: OHSU made movement, but it was clear they weren’t entirely clear on what some of our major concerns were. The movement and discussion afterwards were promising.

  • 5.41 Temporary Workers: Agreed to including “travelers” in this definition and also added a restriction where these workers can not work more than 12 months in an 18 month period. We were primarily concerned with the inclusion in the definition to resolve confusion that we’ve seen with when to curtail travelers and other scheduling issues.

  • 18.6 Filling of vacancies with temporary workers: OHSU agreed to a pared down version of our proposal to hire our relief, flex, and part-time workers to fill in where travelers might usually be hired. They removed our 10% differential and placed restrictions on the process that makes it less useful than our original proposal. We will be considering these changes closely as their movement on this is a promising sign.

  • 19.11.1 Order of curtailment/cancellation: Under the curtailment of temporary workers, OHSU added “if permitted under their contract.” We continue to believe our contract should supercede the contracts with any travelers or other temporary employees.


Both sides have committed to more large proposals over the coming weeks. We will be meeting with the mediator on August 26th and September 2nd, but they may not be able to attend on either September 9th or 16th. We will continue to bargain whether the mediator is there or not and will bring back our livestreams if possible on the days they are not in attendance.

In addition, we plan to have mini-livestreams at noon and 5 PM starting next week. More information on those as they come together.

We will also be launching our survey soon. This will be your opportunity to weigh in on what you feel our bargaining team needs to prioritize as we continue to make our way through this difficult process. Expect an email and blog post once that is live.

We welcome your comments! Please be sure they follow our updated guidelines.

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