Mar 21, 2008  
Bargaining – 3/20/08
 
Yesterday the union members delivered the petition to our COO...

Today UHW’s chief negotiator Charlie came back with wage proposal questions. The scale has gone to research to be 'cost out' against the 6 hospitals surveyed by the administration to determine if their results are correct and fair.

Charlie asked about where employees are placed in the wage scale after raises are implemented. The administration replied they are placed in the nearest step whether higher or lower. The union’s proposal is for 6 steps compared to Enloe administration’s 11 steps. When asked why 11 steps we were told it’s to give more steps at the senior level. The team noted there are no percentages for year 2 and 3 of the contract. Management insisted these increases would be added after there is an agreement to this wage proposal.

The bargaining team noted to administration that they had no mention of the 3% retro pay we had proposed on our delayed market survey. Management said they had no intention of including this.

The administration said they reserve the right to establish new job titles, duties and pay rates. It the union has any objections to this they can meet with administration to work out an agreement. If none can be reached, Enloe can implement these jobs unilaterally and the union can bargain over it in the next contract. Charlie said this could stick the union with this for 2 or more years depending when the contact ends.

In regard to bonus shifts, the administration will not include them in the contract because, they insist if employees work these extra hours they are already getting premium pay for it and that’s enough. The team thinks it’s to keep the status quo.

Charlie asked management if evaluations are subject to grievance. Administration said any evaluation could have disciplinary action but that they don’t want any looking back at these later to grieve them. We say an employee could have questions later about something that is in the report. Management stated they would agree to simple language in our proposal stating only that evaluations are subject to grievance is ok, but that bringing it up two years down the road won’t work.

As far as translating goes, the administration stated that bilingual employees are not required to interpret and can opt out of it. Carol Linscheid instructed employees to call her if they had questions on this matter. It’s not appropriate to use people without medical terminology, as well as to mandate employees to translate. They have instructed staff to use the phone system supplied for this. The union proposed establishing designated employees to translate. The administration will not go for that.

Then the matter of standby pay. The union wants ½ regular pay and management wants to pay $8 an hour. Management has ignored standby on holidays. The union wants ¾ pay. We were told by some that management requires employees on call to be ready to report for work without standby pay. Per Charlie, this is wrong; there should be standby pay.

Yesterday the union members delivered our petition to our COO, but were only able to have a very short conversation with him about the lack of progress at the bargaining table. We said that we hoped that he and our CEO are committed to working with the union and that we hoped that management is ready to listen and be fair. Some of our members then went to the head of Enloe’s Board of Trustees, Darby Makel, and delivered the petition to him. We had about a half-hour discussion with him. He said he would deliver our petition to the other board members and that they would talk about it. We are still hoping our COO, the CEO and the Board will work with us to get where we all need to be.