July 3, 2008

Union contract negotiations at TCL are now underway, with our first bargaining session taking place on July 1st.

Before negotiations had even begun, Administration was insisting that union members on the bargaining committee use their PTO to pay for lost work time while at the bargaining table — something that we can’t remember hearing from any other Local 21 health care employer.

The problem, of course, is that members of the team would use up all of their PTO on bargaining and have nothing left for family vacations or any other purpose.

But Administration changed their position at the bargaining session, and agreed to let members of the union bargaining team be released from work for bargaining without using their PTO. This could be a hopeful sign of the tone this bargain will take — we’ll see as negotiations continue.

Union Offers
Non-Economic Proposals

Negotiating a first union contract takes time. We began the process with bargaining surveys and proposal meetings to find out the key issues and top priorities for TCL employees. Then we put together a union bargaining team to represent co-workers at the table.

The first proposals offered by the union team focused on non-economic issues — that is, issues besides wages and benefits. Non‑economic issues are typically raised first because it’s easier to address these issues before taking on the big money issues.

Below are some highlights of the proposals we offered at our first session. We expect Administration to offer counter-proposals in many of these areas at our next meeting on July 16th.

Highlights of Our
First Non-Economic Proposals:

• Just Cause: Under our just cause proposal—a standard part of every Local 21 contract—TCL would not be allowed to discipline or discharge an employee unless they had just cause. The just cause standard is an important protection which ensures fair and equal treatment of all employees, and requires that all disciplinary rules are reasonable and consistently applied.

• Grievance Procedure: The grievance procedure is how we can make sure just cause and other provisions of our contract get enforced. Under our proposal, the grievance procedure would have several steps, with the final and binding decision made by a neutral arbitrator if the issue cannot be otherwise resolved. This ensures that Administration knows they have to follow the rules laid out in the contract we negotiate.

• Seniority Rights: We proposed for seniority to be a key factor in new job postings, layoffs, restructuring departments, and vacation scheduling. Each employee’s seniority would be defined based on hours worked from date of hire, with provisions for people leaving the bargaining unit and then returning.

• Overtime: All work hours beyond the basic work day of 8 hours will be paid at time a half. (For employees with regular 10-hour shifts, overtime will begin after 10 hours of work in a day.) Overtime would continue to be paid after 40 hours in a workweek.

• Union Membership Language: We proposed a “grandfather” Union shop. Under this proposal, all current employees would be able to choose whether or not to join the Union, but all employees hired after ratification of the agreement will be required to join the Union as a condition of employment. This will help assure a strong Union at Tri-Cities Lab into the future.

• Budgeted Hours: Employees would be hired for positions with specific budgeted hours. Employees could not be scheduled above or below their budgeted hours without mutual agreement between the employee and their supervisor.

What’s Next

We’re extremely early in the bargaining process, but we’re encouraged by the fact that we were able to so quickly resolve the issue around requiring the union bargaining team to use their PTO hours for negotiations.

We’ll know more soon: our next bargaining sessions are scheduled for July 16th and 17th. You should expect to see an update soon after those sessions — we plan to mail out detailed updates each time we meet, so everyone knows what’s happening and where we stand.

In order to get information out even more quickly, the bargaining team is currently collecting email addresses. Please be sure to sign up for email updates in order to get information into your hands as quickly as possible.

If you have any questions, feel free to speak to a member of the Union Bargaining Team, or you can reach Union Representative Bob Barker at 1‑800-732-1188, ext. 6600, or Union Negotiations Director David Fleishman at 1-800-732-1188, ext. 6573.

Stay tuned as bargaining continues. We know that the best contracts come when there’s rock-solid unity within the bargaining unit. Let’s make it happen.