Keck/Norris bargaining update #9 (April 27, 2021)
Published Tuesday, April 27, 2021NUHW Members at Keck and Norris,
Today we had a very productive day in negotiations! After weeks of back and forth, our elected Bargaining Team found a path to agreement on 8 more articles:
Article 2 – Union Representation – This article lays out our shop steward’s rights, use of break rooms, bulletin boards and Union Representative access rights. We managed to increase the number of paid release time for our stewards!
Article 4 – Seniority and Reductions in Force and Recall – After many weeks of back and forth, we reached agreement on this very important article which defines our seniority and lays out the process in place for protecting our jobs in the event of layoffs.
Article 5 – Job Vacancies, Posting and Bidding – this article reserves our right to be awarded open positions as internal candidates using our seniority. Important benefit that allows union members to advance their careers. Now, department leadership must also be transparent with us about staffing levels in our department.
Article 6 – This protects us in the event we experience discrimination, harrassment and or retaliation for reporting such issues, and 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 32 – Meal and Rest Periods – We made solid improvement on our right to not only enforce our right to 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 wage, pandemic protections, and a restoration of the Employer contribution to our retirements. 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,
Alejandra Martinez
Surgical Tech – Keck Hospital
Bargaining Committee Member