Dec 22, 2007  
Bargaining – 12/14/07
 
Article 3: Standards Preserved

Management submitted their proposal on Article 3: Standards Preserved. They added a paragraph about management rights to this proposal.

We caucused on this added management rights paragraph, which they call Paragraph B: Preserved Rights of the Employer. The paragraph is long, broad and vague, which was the consensus of our bargaining team and our chief negotiator, Charlie.

When we called management back into the room, we told them we had concerns about this new addition to Article 3. We felt their paragraph would take away our ability to negotiate over unforeseen issues that may arise. Charlie said it would require that we revisit our previous tentative agreements to see how the newly stated rights of the employer might affect them. We told management that its proposal is too vague, and actually unnecessary.

Charlie said this management section is called a "zipper clause" and that it would negate our right to bargain over anything that comes up, and it favors management.

The union’s original proposal simply stated that the contract, once agreed to and signed, won’t cause any reductions, economic or otherwise.

We gave a counter after lunch that was very much shorter and to the point, stating that the union might agree to a management’s rights clause after everything else on the contract is stated and agreed to.

We re-crafted a counter to their counter taking out what management claimed was unclear in our original proposal. It was the word "otherwise" they objected to, saying it left interpretation open to the union. Management said they would not accept our counter, and that they would stick with their original counter. We set this one aside to be revisited later.

At the next session on Thursday, 12/20/07, management will propose a counter on PTO and ESL. We hope to move forward on new and old business which had been set aside. We are now starting to get to the economic issues.

All of us on your bargaining team believe strongly that we all deserve the same standards that other hospital workers in the north state have achieved. We are heartened by the recent support our fellow workers have shown us. Management seems to be heading into a hard-nosed stance again. It appears that for our service unit their "market survey" has been reduced to the poorly paid labor market here in Chico. To which we say, "Bah, humbug!"

PC