Bargaining

Despite our continued attempts to reach a fair agreement with Jackson management, the Public Health Trust on Tuesday declared that our bargaining has reached an impasse. Our initial offer of $36 million in employee concessions, plus our willingness to offer more as long as we can receive assurances that the money will be spent wisely, has been rejected.

As our bargaining team and experts continue to work on verifying ever-changing numbers from management, it is important that members understand that our unity and resolve during negotiations are key to our success. Mr. Migoya is launching underhanded tactics to divide and conquer, but we must continue to fight for the best possible contract.

Union financial experts were extremely disappointed today to see new and different calculations and assumptions from management as both sides were reviewing the cost of proposed concessions in preparation for tomorrow’s scheduled bargaining session.

Negotiations continued today with management submitting a counter proposal, which maintained the 4-3 schedule for RNs, but eliminated the guaranteed work week, a reversal from the previous bargaining session. Chief Negotiator Martha Baker, RN, and our bargaining team remain committed to keeping both the 4-3 schedule and our guaranteed work week.

Carlos Migoya showed us his hand last week with his announcement of employee furloughs: he’s desperate for us to come to an agreement at the bargaining table. While it’s a drastic, unprecedented and perhaps illegal move, this new development could be used for our advantage as we continue negotiations with management. We are still advocating for management to reconsider their original offer of $122 million in contract concessions. Now that Migoya has made this frenzied move, it’s time for us to think strategically of ways in which we can benefit from this crisis.

At today’s session, our bargaining team continued to discuss with management improved language on layoffs, floating and cross training. Earlier this week, management came to the table with improved language on some of their proposals, withdrawing parts that we had previously …

Management remained firm on demanding $122 million in contract concessions at today’s bargaining session.

After weeks of asking management to give us the real data behind their proposed contract takeaways, they agreed today that they have not yet provided us with necessary numbers and calculations.  They said they would work as quickly as possible …

Management was adamant at the Aug. 15th bargaining session that they wanted to eliminate the 3/4 schedule for nurses despite evidence our bargaining team presented that the change would not save any money for Jackson and would devastate staffing at Jackson. Management also had minimal data to present to support the $145 million in takeaways they are proposing.

Once again, Jackson’s managers attempt to balance Jackson’s deficit budget on the backs of healthcare workers.

During the first RN bargaining session on July 15th, 2011, President Martha Baker, RN, warned Jackson’s managers that taking more from nurses could have consequences that would harm patient care. “Nurses are behind the market already working at 2007 wages,” she said.