Disconnection.

We’re back at the table. And it’s amazing how quickly optimism turns to…..well, not exactly pessimism, but it sure isn’t optimism.

We have consistently been proposing things that incentivize the behavior management has said they’re trying to promote. As I said before, bargaining this time around has been all about discussion: we go back and forth trying to identify our common interests, and work to come up with mutually agreeable solutions. It seemed to be working.

How quickly things can change.

It would be not an exaggeration to state that every single proposal management has floated at the table—including every response they’ve made to our own proposals—has been negative, and a takeaway. This pattern began to emerge at the last bargaining session (September 22), and opened into full flower today (September 29). For example, we’ve been discussing—in general terms—revisions to the much-maligned sick leave policy. We made a series of proposals that would increase employee flexibility to use sick leave hours, as well as providing incentives for employees to NOT use sick hours (thus decreasing unplanned absences, which management says is the main problem). We’re even open to entertaining a PTO proposal, provided we have input into how it is implemented. And management came back at us rejecting every one of our proposals.

The question we have been asking management is: “How are your proposals helping to make you ‘The Employer of Choice,’ which is one of your stated goals?” And they have yet to offer us a satisfactory answer. 

Why is this? Well, there seems to be a logical disconnect on the part of management. They insist they want to encourage good behavior, but they are proposing, literally, nothing that does that. Instead, they are rejecting any incentives proposed by us as being too expensive, and not nearly as effective as simply imposing discipline on employees who don’t do what management wants.

I personally think a lot of this is related to the absence of Jeanette Loudon-Corbett at the table. Jeanette, as you may or may not know, is the head of HR at ACMC, and is generally regarded as the decision-maker at the bargaining table. She also has a sharp mind and an intuitive understanding of the issues we discuss at the table. Unfortunately, Jeanette has been ill, and is unlikely to return to bargaining for a couple weeks, at the earliest. With Jeanette gone, nobody has really stepped up to provide any kind of meaningful leadership on the management side.

Hopefully things will improve. But today, so far, is kind of sucky.

Episode IV: A New Hope

Sorry about the title. Couldn’t help myself.

We’re going into our next bargaining sessions (Thursday September 8, and Friday September 9, starting at 9am both days, in Classroom A hopefully), and things have gotten….well, interesting. But in a good way.

Our meeting with management on August 17 was actually quite productive. And encouraging. And I, as a member of your bargaining team, am cautiously….optimistic?

Whoa. It’s weird, using that word to describe negotiations with ACMC. But there you have it.

To briefly recap the events of August 17: it was something of a marathon, going until 8pm. The first part of the day we devoted to a proposal we made to management to bring in an education fund for RNs (and for the whole hospital, really). The SEIU UHW West & Joint Employer Education Fund has already been adopted by several Bay Area hospitals to augment their existing employee education programs. They offer career counseling, tuition reimbursement, CEU programs, and other tasty things. It would cost ACMC peanuts to bring it on board. Management said they’d think about it. But it looks promising.

But far more interesting—to me, anyway—was what happened in the later session. We turned our attention to an issue many of you have talked to me about personally: the conversion of SAN employees to full-time “regular” employees.

In the past, this is how things went: we (or management) would put forward an already-crafted proposal, something that could be put right into the MOU as is. The language was already written, it was already indexed, etc. That was a good way to keep things concrete and focused (we thought).

The problem with this bargaining technique is that it didn’t encourage discussion of the real issues. It instead made us focus on specific language very early in negotiation process, effectively ending the discussion process and going instead to a “tug-of-war” situation, in which we would demand certain things be removed, demand things be kept in, and so on, using the threat of escalating work action to leverage our position.

As you may have already gleaned from the above paragraph, it, uh, didn’t work as well as I would like.

Here’s how the August 17 negotiation on SAN conversion was different. We didn’t put across specific language. Instead, our lead negotiators started off a CONVERSATION with management: “So, there’s a problem at ACMC with SAN conversion. Only 17% of available full-time positions are filled by SANs here. At other hospitals, the number is 60%. Let’s talk about why that is, and see if we can agree on ways to improve that.” And a lively and, dare I say it, productive discussion ensued.

Now, here’s where things got interesting. Management took a break, then came back with a document that outlined specifics on the SAN issue. The things they proposed harked back to the “tug-of-war” model of bargaining; i.e., they proposed onerous takeaways that really had nothing to do with solving the problem. You could feel the air get sucked out of the room. We read the paper, were offended, outraged, words were exchanged, and management decided to take a break and come back.

And when they came back, their lead negotiator essentially said, “You know, forget that last document. It was a mistake. Let’s get back to this discussion we were having, because I think we were making progress.” And they identified some of the problems they felt were behind that 17% figure, and what they thought could be done to improve it. And we found a surprising amount of common ground in our two positions. I mean, like, most of it was stuff both sides could easily agree to. And, at the end of the day, there was this sense, on both sides, that real progress was made on a potentially thorny issue.

To sum up, we went in there to have a discussion, management came back with a “tug-of-war” challenge, we declined to take the bait, and instead invited management to come back for more discussion. And management did. And stuff got done. Good stuff.

Like I said, at this point I’m only cautiously optimistic. But it’s a welcome change from some earlier experiences I’ve had at the table. Stay tuned.