Ambulatory bargaining update #7 (April 22, 2021)
Published Thursday, April 22, 2021Dear NUHW Clinic Members,
We had another positive day. We reached agreement on 5 more articles:
Article 6 – Which protects us in the event we experience discrimination, harassment and or retaliation for reporting such issues. This article also defines our statutory rights to take claims to state agencies or arbitrate such issues.
Article 9 – Grievance Procedure – This process determines how we enforce our contract, challenge unfair disciplines, violations of law or a past practice. This procedure has timelines built in and lays out what happens if we are not in agreement with a Hospital response to our grievance. The major change in this article is that we have agreed to a faster timeline to take an issue to arbitration and reach a resolution by a neutral party.
Article 10 – Discipline – The employer backed off their egregious proposal that prior disciplines could be used beyond 12 months to determine a new discipline. They moved off that today and we agreed to maintain the important standard of disciplines not being able to be referenced after 1 year.
Article 19 – Leaves of Absence – we improved our bereavement article to include more relatives
Article 28 – Vacation Scheduling – We secured the ability of our members to be granted up to 2 weeks of vacation unpaid if you do not have any vacation accrued.
Article 32 – Meal and Rest Periods – We made solid improvement on our right to not only enforce our breaks but also claim penalty pay for missed meals AND breaks. More details to come!
However, the Employer still has not responded to many of our economic proposals, like increased wages, winning a free family HMO like our Hospital co-workers, and a restoration of the Employer contribution to our retirement plans. These will all be areas of struggle that we need to be ready to fight for, and vote to go on strike if need be. Every single Hospital contract has always required our members to vote to strike or go out on strike. This one will be no different.
In Solidarity,
For the Union!
Lucy Lamont
Administrative Assistant
Shop Steward
Bargaining Committee Member