Contract Vote 7/11

July 3, 2008

We are pleased to announced that the Local 21 Bargaining Committee has reached agreement with Olympic Medical Center on a tentative three year agreement for Clerical employees that raises wages, improves premiums, and cleans up and clarifies various inconsistencies in the current contract.

Highlights of our Tentative Agreement

• Wage Increases: The most challenging part of our negotiations this year was resolving issues around job classifications and wage rates. In the end, we won wage improvements of 8.75% to 10% over the life of the 3-year agreement. We were also able to move some jobs to higher classifications that provide some additional wage improvements. Full details of the wage changes will be available for your review at the vote meeting.

• Higher Pay Premiums: Evening shift differential will rise to $1.50, and night shift to $2.00. Lead Pay will increase to $1.25 an hour, and standby pay will go up to $2.50.

• Other Improvements: We have modified the training premium language and deleted the 10% reduction in pay for new trainees. We also slightly modified the vacation language maintaining seniority for bidding vacation time, updated all health insurance language, and included a waiver of co-pays for hospital services. Most of these changes were made to clean up existing language to better reflect
  current practices.