Mediation Update for 8/26/2025
Today’s mediation was mostly a work day as we prepared as much language as we could and OHSU worked on the financial proposals we passed last week.
We met for one session this afternoon where we passed everything we were able to complete today and made plans for the next few weeks.
As both teams have a lot of dense material to get through, we are using next Tuesday as a work day and meeting with management and the mediator again on September 9th.
The big news for today is that we have a tentative agreement on Article 2: Union Provisions. This is loaded with really important wins that will make life better for our members and should make future contract negotiations go much faster. Here are the highlights:
Our union’s President will be released up to 40 hours per week to do union work with an obligation to complete one shift per week in their OHSU position. This brings us more in line with other unions our size across the country.
Our Vice-President will have 20 hours per week to assist our members.
Our Secretary and Treasurer will have 10 hours per week to complete their union work.
Our Chief Steward will go from having 832 hours per year to 1040 hours to assist our members and shepherd the steward program.
Our steward leadership will greatly expand, creating more structure and ensuring our members always have the representation they need and deserve.
We will move from 1 to 5 Senior Lead Stewards.
We will move from 11 Lead Stewards to 1 for every 500 represented employees (this would currently be 17).
All regular stewards will have 50 hours available to them per year (currently either 20 or 50 depending on the type of steward).
Total steward hours will no longer be a set number, but instead be calculated at 45 minutes per represented employee, per year. This takes us from 3,800 hours to 6,494 in 2025.
Better coverage for New Employee Orientation, which is the best place for us to recruit new members as they begin their careers at OHSU.
OHSU has agreed to give the union regular reports on how many travelers and agency workers are contracted with the hospital, including classification, number, FTE, and department worked for. This is a place where our union’s tenacity led OHSU to track these numbers in ways they hadn’t in the past.
Future bargaining teams will have 2 days per week to work on language and trade proposals with OHSU. This should get us to ratification much faster than we’ve been able to get there in the past (or the present).
Below are the counters we passed to OHSU today. We continue to work through the packages we’ve been assembling based on our main priorities:
Living wage (passed 8/19)
Appendix A (passed 8/19)
Retirement (passed today)
Safe Staffing/Quality of Life (partially passed today)
Leave Time
Benefits
Retirement:
16.2.1 Employer Contributions to 401(a) UPP: Holding at 12%. This is what we received in 2015.
16.2.2 Employer Contribution Match to 403(b) UPP: This is a benefit we have not received in the past. We moved from a maximum match of up to 20% at 25 years of employment to a maximum of 12% at 10 years.
16.2.3 Employee Contributions Pick-Up for PERS: Did not move from our previous proposal.
16.3 Wage Equivalency: Did not move from our previous proposal.
Safe Staffing/Quality of Life Part One:
5.23 Preceptor: We continue to work to find a definition that properly splits out onboarding from precepting to address OHSU’s stated concerns about making sure that they’re compensating preceptors for appropriate work. We all agree that precepting is not showing your new coworker where the bathroom is (but you shouldn’t have to clock out if you tell them while you’re precepting).
5.X Trainer: We passed our definition again.
5.X Training Pay: We passed our definition again. The differential is set elsewhere in language we did not pass today. We expect to have that in a package of all our outstanding differentials next joint session.
5.X Lead Work: We are willing to accept OHSU’s most recent pass at the language with an explicit promise at the table that they will not demand that someone do all of the tasks on the list to qualify and that there be a separate definition for training (see above). This means your boss wouldn’t be able to deny you lead pay if you were only completing tasks laid out in 5 of the 7 bullet points. Promises like this are admissible in mediation and we’ve used them to win cases in the past.
7.5.1 Lactation Periods: We are willing to accept OHSU’s recent pass with an explicit promise at the table that they will not demand that people use their breaks and lunches or clocking out to pump.
7.7 Double Back: While the preservation of a rest option is important to both parties, our language gives the employee higher pay when a rest option isn’t feasible. We continue to ask that workers who use the work option receive time and a half for the duration of their scheduled shift.
9.2 Call Back: We are willing to accept OHSU’s most recent pass, which added an explicit call out that premiums from 10.3 Work from Home supercede this language
10.1 Shift DIfferential: We accepted that the evening shift percentage remain the same with the minimum increasing from $1.36 to $1.75 and the minimum for night shift increasing from $2.65 to $3.
10.2 On-Call Pay: Both teams have agreed to the pay increasing from 1 hour of straight pay for every 6 hours on call to 1 hour for every 5 hours. The last points of disagreement are time on-call on holidays being paid at time and a half and our request that on-call hours worked on a holiday receive double the straight rate of pay..
Excessive Call: We sent our previous request: “An employee who works more than sixteen (16) hours in a twenty-four (24) hour period as a result of being on call will be paid at two (2) times the employee’s regular rate of pay (i.e., double time) for all work performed beyond the sixteen (16) hours. Hours worked do not have to be consecutive.”
10.2.1 Supplemental Call/Supplemental Call Plus: To get supplemental call, we are willing to drop supplemental call plus. This can be our “nose in the tent” to establish precedent and expand our rights in the future.
10.3 Work From Home While On Call: OHSU has agreed to much of our language here with the final difference being our requirement that if work from home results in more than 16 consecutive or non-consecutive hours receive double time for all work beyond 16 hours.
10.5 Lead Work: OHSU has agreed to our proposal that lead work be assigned in a minimum of 2 hour increments instead of the current 4 hour increments. OHSU also agreed to much of our other language, but removed the automatic assignment if no one in management responded to a request to be assigned the work.
10.6 Bilingual Differential: We agreed to OHSU’s restructuring of the language, but held that employees receive a 5% differential rather than OHSU’s proposed $3,000 a year bonus. We also want to be sure that people can receive the differential in the course of their duties and not just in a potentially narrow clinical setting. Thank you to everyone who reached out with your concerns about the change to how the bilingual differential is paid. We heard you and held closer to current contract language.
10.10.1 Bonus Payment: We cut this language as part of our changes to 10.6 Bilingual Differential.
10.10 Work Out of Classification: We are mostly sticking to current contract language. We added the same provision here that we did to lead work about following a path of escalation when no one is available to approve the work. We also explained to OHSU that we need 6.6.2 Failure to Reach Agreement to be approved. That is the best place to address problems where there is work out of class required, but no one to approve it.
a. We proposed a 3 instead of 6 months limit for review. We have moved from our proposal that would automatically move someone to a new position. While there is national precedent for this kind of rule, it’s not something that is common in our region or sector. We added language that the employer would not unduly deny these requests.
10.11 Weekend Differential: Holding at our increase from $1.50 to $3.
10.12 Preceptor Pay: We are holding at our most recent version of the proposal, which is an increase from $1 to $2. We continue to include language that opens the differential to any group that is not explicitly included but isn’t listed. We also held on our addition of pharmacy technicians. We indicated we would be willing to cut the language that opens the pool if they can provide a more complete and accurate list of all job titles that should be included.
OHSU did not pass language today.
The last two proposals we have not received a response from management on are Appendix J: Workplace Harassment, Discrimination, and Violence and Article 19: Layoff. In discussions today, they indicated they will have responses to those articles as soon as possible.
We’re in the final stages of preparation with our survey vendor and an invite to take our bargaining survey will be in everyone’s email inboxes imminently. A post will go up on the blog as soon as they’ve been sent. The survey will be open for 2 weeks and we will have events to get the word out so that we can be sure we receive as many responses as possible from every corner of OHSU.
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