By now you’ve probably heard. Yeah, we had our first meeting with management. It lasted most of the day. We came in the meeting with a great deal more preparation than management was expecting, apparently. Basically, we had an annotated copies of the MOU, in which we’d flagged all the things we plan on addressing/changing/etc. And we went over all of those things with management (we even gave them their own copies; ain’t we nice?).
For their part, management didn’t propose a whole lot back at us. We expect that to come in a future bargaining session, but we were a little surprised that they didn’t have anything ready for us.
As you’ve probably also heard, the meeting was surprisingly positive. Granted, it’s still early in the process, but in general our “proto-proposals” were things that management would have a difficult time arguing against.
The next few years are going to be a time of intense changes at ACMC, with all the healthcare reforms coming into effect. There will likely be more people with health insurance, and they’ll be free to go other hospitals. Not only does that translate into increased competition for patients; it also means increased competition for healthcare workers. Both sides recognize that ACMC is going to have to attract and retain quality workers in an already competitive market, and that’s going to take some work.
Briefly, here are some (not all) of the ideas we’ve already put across table that we expect to be crafting into proposals in the coming weeks:
• The establishment of permanent union offices on the Highland and Fairmont campuses;
• Major changes to the sick leave policy [management agreed this needed to be worked on];
• Enrolling ACMC in SEIU/UHW and Joint Employer Education Fund, to help our workers go back to school and enhance their skill sets;
• Changes in the wage scale/steps;
• Better practices on how SANs are handled, including SAN conversions;
• Changes in the grievance procedure.
Traditionally, wages are among the last things we bring up at negotiations. But we’re working on proposals for that as well.
Our next meeting is scheduled for August 17, Wednesday, from 3pm to 7pm, at Highland in Classroom A.
