There is big news coming out of this week’s AURN negotiation session! Our bargaining team is relieved to report that our increased CNI MOU is being extended through July 2, 2023. We know how important this incentive is to make up for critical staffing shortages and to keep both nurses and patients safe. Essential clarifications were made to the MOU to make sure the CNI is provided fairly across OHSU. We saw nurses disqualified from getting CNI who had previously had it provided. Nurses who are qualified and take assignments will receive CNI for hours beyond their FTE/MRS. Read the full MOU here. We are encouraged to see this clarified in our MOU to stabilize OHSU’s ability to staff all units safely and properly across the hospital.

Both sides have introduced all initial proposals to the table. Our final opening proposals involved Remote Work, Modified Operations, a new Oncology Float Pool, and our Healthcare Access Committee. Management provided us with their additional proposals including proposing that new nurses who forget to fill out retirement paperwork would end up with zero contributions instead of the current default of 4%. See below for a full summary of both sides' remaining opening proposals.

Our team is quickly moving forward to the process of providing counter proposals to management and focusing on addressing our top bargaining priorities: staffing, workplace safety, retention and recruitment, justice/equity/diversity/inclusion, and moral injury. We will continue to discuss these priorities with nurses across OHSU.

We need everyone to chip in and help campaign reach a fair agreement. It was clear at the prior bargaining session that management doesn’t want to provide wages that are competitive with our true peer institutions, or even fully keep up with inflation. Additionally, they continued to be unwilling to bargain around staffing. We are concerned about how they would prefer to only use what is in statewide legislation which is not specific to OHSU’s needs. As we move forward, we will continue to need all members to show management how important these issues are to our entire OHSU community. We are fighting not only for nurses but for our patients and the public.

We ask all AURN Nurses to MARK YOUR CALENDARS:

May 8 - OHSU Event
Statewide Day of Action for Nurses Week
More Details to Come!

Remember to keep wearing AURN purple and green on Wednesdays, and blue on Tuesdays to show support for the OHSU AFSCME Graduate Research Union which is also in negotiations.

Join one of our committees to plan our next actions using our consent to serve form: Contract Action Team, Unit Rep, Communications Committee, Membership Committee, Grievances Committee

AND be sure to pack the room at our upcoming negotiations:
Wednesday, April 26 from 12 p.m.-5 p.m.
Knight Cancer Center at the waterfront
2720 South Moody Ave, Room 1011

Schedule of Remaining Bargaining Sessions:
5/3 at ONA office in Tualatin
5/10 virtual (zoom link will be provided for observers)
5/24 at OHSU
5/31 at ONA office in Tualatin
6/7 at OHSU
6/14 at ONA office in Tualatin
6/21 at OHSU

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Proposals Summary

New Article on Remote Work:
• ONA has introduced a new article that will define the work of remote nurses as it continues to expand throughout many departments at OHSU. We tried to capture current policy, but also improve upon it.
• Supporting the preferences of nurses who work partially or fully remote to not be forced to work at an OHSU worksite where there is not a reasonable cause.
• Covering expenses such as internet and phone service, as well as having access to reimbursement for furniture, mailings and faxes to patients.
• New work standards around safety, trainings and job protections when it comes to unexpected situations like inclement weather and interruption of work due to technical issues.
• A fair process to accommodate remote nurses who experience power or internet outages at home including reimbursement for hotspots, and assistance with alternative temporary work locations.
• Fair treatment of remote nurses who have minor children at home.

New Article on Modified Operations, Communicable Disease Management, Emergency Preparedness:
• Optional cross training available for nurses so we can better prepare for future pandemics, emergencies, or other modified operations. At the beginning of the pandemic some nurses begged to be trained so they could help the ED and Covid Units and were told we would deal with that when we got there. OHSU was not prepared, and we are not willing to go through that again.
• We proposed protections for patient and nurses’ safety and exposure precautions including enhanced provisions on PPE, illness, quarantine, check-points, workers compensation coverage and other protections that are essential during communicable disease outbreaks.
• We should be involved in an annual audit of PPE and in determinations of reserve supplies, to avoid “just in time” stocking that occurred prior to the Covid 19 pandemic that left AURN nurses without PPE during the beginning stages of the pandemic. It never should have happened, and we want to be a part of it never happening again.
• We proposed a stipend of $100 for employees who seek lodging/overnight stay at OHSU between shifts during inclement weather/modified operations. This stipend is in addition to hotel stay, so that nurses can cover the costs of food/transport/etc. while navigating the stress of travel and overnight stay during that time. This benefits the hospital by hopefully increasing the number of nurses who might choose to stay overnight during snow/ice storms and other events so that they will be able to report for their next shift.
• Free parking access for nurses during modified operations.
• We also proposed a crisis staffing differential of $100 per hour for nurses when crisis contingency staffing is declared. Our hope is that crisis and contingency staffing are never utilized, but if we are forced to, then all nurses on impacted units would be compensated for the moral injury and duress they endure while working in unsafe conditions in which patient care is compromised. To witness patients not receive life saving care when our employer could have staffed up properly in advance of events causes moral trauma to everyone involved.

New Oncology Float Pool MOU:
ONA proposed the creation of an oncology float pool that will support the 13KPV, 14KPV, CHH oncology and CHO clinics to bring relief during staffing deficits and cover absences either planned or unplanned and including the 20% differential for those nurses who are properly oriented (to match the 20% differential we have proposed for our other specialty float pools).

MOU on Healthcare Access Committee:
We proposed continuing and improving the Healthcare Access Committee. This is a committee that looks at healthcare access issues related to our members finding providers and appointments necessary for their own healthcare. We know this is an important issue to ambulatory and remote nurses, but also the entire AURN membership as healthcare access has continued to decline under OHSU health insurance options.


MANAGEMENT COUNTER PROPOSALS:

Article 17 Retirement
• Reducing the time from when the employee makes a selection into the university pension program from 6 to 3 months.
• Management proposed removing the 4% employer contributions for new nurses, who for any reason do not complete their retirement enrollment paperwork. Currently, nurses can fill out paperwork to modify their allocation amounts, but the default for all nurses is to start with a 4-6% contribution to retirement that OHSU matches depending on years of service. Under management’s proposal, new nurses will continue to receive that, but only if they complete all paperwork by the deadline. Our bargaining team was deeply concerned about this proposal.

Appendix E – Community Hematology/Oncology
• Management proposed that a CHO employee that gets at least one hour of notice for a shift cancellation is not entitled to any minimum pay. Currently it is 90 minutes.

Article 7 Hours of Work
• Management introduced a new addition to their article 7 proposal suggesting that if they make a temporary unit closure in the Acute Care Cluster, they want the right to reallocate the work across the cluster. Currently they are not allowed to do this, except in the Critical Care Cluster.

Article 26 Health & Safety
• Stephanie Gilliam from Mission Control provided a presentation on EMTALA and the Administrative Discharge Policy. View her slide deck here.
• OHSU rejected all language that was proposed by ONA about the creation of an AURN Nursing Health and Safety committee. They proposed we send AURN representation to their 25-person hospital-wide Workplace Violence Committee instead, which may not cover the full scope of our proposal.
• When it comes to workplace violence, our proposed language regarding zero tolerance was rejected. They claimed they were worried about it being a grey area, and that zero tolerance is not in the hospital policy.
• They want to clarify drug testing of positions. Currently, they can test when someone first takes a drug testable position. They have concerns about transferring between positions related to insurance coverage involving to pharmacy and infusion positions.
• They mostly agreed with our proposal on suicide prevention.