Today, we met via our subcommittees and our focus was staffing. We have too many unresolved staffing related proposals so we got into our respective teams and engaged the employer on 3 separate Articles (Floating, Dist. of Available Work, Posting & Filling of Vacancies).

Across California, HCA Caregivers Take Action for a Contract with Quality Care Improvements

With support from our local communities, more than 1,000 SEIU-UHW members at HCA took to the streets in a statewide "Week of Action" to call on HCA for safer staffing, quality care improvements, and a contract for caregivers with better pay and benefit protections.

Members protest for safer staffing and a fair contract

Yesterday, SEIU-UHW members at HCA rallied together at Good Samaritan Hospital to kick off a week of action at the corporation's five California hospitals. Hundreds of members gathered outside the San Jose hospital to demand that management make the necessary changes for safer staffing, quality care improvements and a fair contract for members at HCA hospitals; and to inform the community of the effect these issues would have on patient care.

"I participated in our picket today because our patients deserve better, our communities deserve better, and our families deserve better," said Krsytene Mueller a SEIU-UHW Bargainer/Steward.

We met and bargained today and unfortunately, management came with nothing, again. We countered and agreed to TA a package proposal mgmt. gave us last week but even this package proposal was tied to "training language" we haven't seen and if we can't agree to this training language, we go back to square one. Management didn't counter or address any of our outstanding staffing proposals (Dist. of Available Work, Reductions In Force (layoffs), Floating, On-Call/Call-Back, etc.).

We met this week via our sub-committees to begin discussions around wage scales and job descriptions but unfortunately, while we showed up with actual proposals, management came with a "concept". A concept that would essentially not bring any employee to their appropriate step within their scale, but lowering our scales bringing the scales down to them. We requested to meet on our 2nd day of bargaining and mgmt. felt that their time would be better spent reviewing our wage scale and job description proposals in their office as oppossed to bargaining on our scheduled bargaining date.

We have been working very hard to come to a middle ground on many issues. While both sides have moved more in the last 2 weeks than at any time before, we are still far apart on the non-economic issues that are most important to us:

• Staffing - Call-Offs, Floating, Workload Articles proposed, still no agreement.
• Union Member Rights - Mgmt. still insisting to hire/promote anyone based on experience, disregarding seniority.
• Dist. of Available Work - Mgmt. still wanting to give per-diems hours (up to 40) before PT.
• Order of Displacement - Mgmt. still insisting that if layoffs are necessary, FT/PT members will get laid-off first, before per-diems.
  
  

As reported in our last update, we told management that while we were pleased with the progress we had made, we were not satisfied with pace of negotiations and that we were looking at ways to focus our sessions and get them moving faster. So...

Management agreed to use an agenda and we focused our work this week on 28 specific articles. We made some progress. We have a better idea of where management stands on some of our proposals and we TA'd 5 more Articles, including Grievance and Arbitration.

We are scheduled to meet next week and will revisit our need to schedule informational pickets. Until then, stay focused, united and ready to act for safer-staffing, quality patient care, enhanced protections, a living wage.

Our Next Bargaining Session is May 20th, 21st in L.A. Sticker-Up/Purple-Up, FOR A FAIR CONTRACT!

As reported in our last update, we have invoked and gone through the steps of our dispute resolution process and coming into these negotiations we were prepared to notify management of our intent to conduct informational picketing at all 5 hospitals.

We made some progress this week and decided not to schedule informational pickets at this time.

Coming off of our HCA-wide picket authorization votes, this week in negotiations we told management that, yes, getting a fair contract is our priority but we have no interest in taking forever to get it done.

We worked hard, and feel we have reached some understanding with management about what our priorities are.

After meeting with management 3 days last week, one thing is clear - bosses and workers sometimes don't see eye to eye. While management proposed changes to our contract that would

• Take away our right for first dibs on bargaining unit jobs before outsiders
• Take away travel pay for our members on-call and called back in to work
• Take away our right to progressive discipline.

We met with HCA management 2 days this week. We proposed many changes to language in our contract, including:

• Language that would make it clearer and easier for Per-Diems who wish to be reclassified to part-time or full-time to do so if and when they meet the requirements (Reclassification).




• Language that would require supervisors to create work plans with employees who have been assigned extra work or another area to do, so our members do not have to decide anymore what the "priorities" are (Workload).




• We had a lengthy exchange with the employer about the current system for getting bilingual pay. We talked about how the system discourages people from getting paperwork filled out to get the pay and how our members care too much about our patients to refuse to help a patient in need even if it is virtually impossible to get paid for translation.

We are pleased to report that we tentatively agreed (TA'd) to 3 non-economic proposals this week in negotiations. We are moving closer in concept to resolve the issue's around Article 8 - Distribution of Available Work.