Good day, membership!
We had another bargaining session the afternoon of 4/3/2025. The tenor of this session was far more pleasant and less confrontational than previous sessions which was a nice change.
Angela gave an excellent explanation of what makes primary care different from other doctors. I think leadership listened. Tony didn’t interrupt once which may be a first. They agreed to a six month probationary period with the option for a mutually agreed upon extension. That was good. We are still apart on retention of seniority and severance, but we can get there.
Puzzling, we are still at loggerheads over our proposed lactation policy. Essentially, leadership doesn’t think that we deserve to be treated differently from other employees. The illogic of that stance is clear in that different employees have different benefits (can we say APL versus PTO anyone). We’re still going to be working on this. Their stance just doesn’t make sense.
For those who have not seen it, here is the link to our survey on breastfeeding: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BMZFDPF
If you have breastfed in the past three years please fill it out. It’s helpful to us.
We did talk about managers asking people to make up time when we leave early or take time in the day for necessary appointments. They agreed it was not an official policy, but how different managers manage. We are holding firm that we do not and should not be required to make up that time. Fundamentally leadership wants to treat us as hourly employees or salaried exempt employees when it suits them without consistency. Chris will be discussing specific managers with Chuck as we felt calling out people in the larger group was not necessary at this time. If you are having issues, please let Chris know. Thanks.
We also discussed some unresolved matters in the grievance process. We think that we will get those resolved next session.
Nothing much else substantial happened. Overall, movement was made. Leadership agreeing to the 6 month probationary period is a win. We are holding off on deciding how long we want this contract to be and successor language until we are further in this process. If OHSU does complete its takeover of Legacy, then we won’t really need successor language.
That brings up the 457(b) plan news. We are working now to get all the right people together from labor reps to union leaders to legal to work on a plan to bargain the impacts of this change for all of our affected represented groups. We should have some news soon and some additional information on the options given that this is a statutory change because of the change in status of employees should the merger go through.
We still plan on having our webinar on compensation on May 1. Our compensation system is quite complex. As we prepare to confront our annual true-up, we will be holding a webinar to illuminate the inner workings of our compensation system.
Zoom Link for May 1:
Topic: Legacy Primary Care Compensation Webinar
Time: May 1, 2025 08:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83386398991
Meeting ID: 833 8639 8991
Again please reach out for questions, thoughts, feelings as well as if there are new members. We are reliant on you all for helping to spread the word.
Thanks for reading.
Kar-yee