Our Tentative Agreements So Far
As we focus more on the last few, contentious articles it is a good time to look back on all of the accomplishments we’ve made in this contract campaign.
There is a lot of language that is close to being agreed upon that we are hoping to finalize like protected leave, Appendix J, and updated layoff language.
Below is a brief summary of some of the highlights of what we’ve tentatively agreed to so far. You can find the full list of TA’s and the language that was changed here. Adding summaries in the document of the individual changes is an ongoing project that will eventually become an annotated version of the full contract for members to review before a ratification vote.
Tentative Agreement Highlights:
Article 2 Union Provisions: Many great changes here, including
Expanded steward assignment leadership by adding 4 additional senior leads and having the number of lead stewards to 1 per 500 represented employees. This will change us from 11 to 17 stewards upon ratification.
Gives additional hours to our union’s President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer. Our president will now have up to 40 hours per week of release time with an obligation to work one shift per week in their current OHSU role.
Future bargaining teams will have 2 days per week, shortening future negotiations.
Fewer restrictions on union communications.
7.2.6 Temporary Changes to Work Location: Reduces distance OHSU can assign someone to a new location on short notice from 5 miles to 3 miles.
13.3.2 Immediate Family and Household Members: Expands the definition of who you can take sick time to assist or use paid bereavement leave to grieve well beyond the legal definition.
Paid/Unpaid Administrative Leave: Added parameters around the use of paid and unpaid leave and more robust reporting to the union regarding who has been suspended and why. This should help us combat the way management has abused this right.
Article 24: Grievances and Arbitration: We have standardized timelines to make it easier for our members, stewards, and management to keep track of what step we’re on and how long we have to respond. We’ve also made missed deadlines carry equal consequences for each party. Currently, if our union misses a deadline the grievance is lost while if management misses one, it just moves to the next step. Once ratified, if either party misses a deadline, it is moved to the next step.
These are just a few of the things we’ve won in the 73 pages of tentative agreements you’ll find in the document linked above. If you think there’s something in here we should have highlighted, please mention it below.
We welcome your comments! Please be sure they follow our updated guidelines.
If you don’t provide an email address for verification or a proper name (single letters and pseudonyms are not allowed), we won’t be able to post your comment. Please be sure your comment is related to the topic of this article. Off-topic comments may be restricted.