Our AURN bargaining team was hard at work again on Wednesday, May 3 exchanging counter proposals with management. The session was productive as we worked through several more topics, in hopes of moving towards discussion of our top priorities again next week. Our team pushed hard for transparency, fairness, and protections around our posting, interviewing, and hiring process, with special attention to the Transition to Practice Program’s new growth. We made it clear we need to be a part of the development of the TTP program as the voice of nurses at OHSU that can provide true shared governance. When it came to discussion of bereavement leave, we made it clear our 12 hours of leave is far behind our peers who have 3-5 days of paid bereavement leave at most hospitals in Oregon and around the country.

On Wednesday, May 10 from 10 a.m. to noon we will be joined at virtual bargaining by special guests: Oregon House Representative, Travis Nelson; ONA Director of Nursing Practice and Professional Development, Matt Calzia; OHSU Hospital-wide Staffing Committee Co-Chair, Erica Swartz; and possibly others. Management has agreed to bring the Chief Nursing Executive Brooke Baldwin to negotiations for the first time for introductions and to hear about safe staffing. After caucusing for lunch all AURN members are invited to rejoin and observe our afternoon session possibly from 1-5 p.m., though we may have further caucus time as well. We are asking all AURN nurses to try to join virtually by registering here.

Summary of May 3 Counter-Proposals Exchanged

AURN Counter Proposals:
Article 25- Campus Access and Commute Services (CACS) new title- formerly Transportation and Parking
·In the parking rates section, we stood strong on our members participating in determining parking rate changes.
·The article was updated to reflect the new system of parking that replaced the former permit system.
·We proposed new language about free bus passes by request for nurses.
·We proposed a new section about parking safety - that the employer is responsible to ensure safety and security in parking and bicycle areas 24 hours per day. We proposed that employees be reimbursed for the documented loss or damage of personal property that occurs on OHSU property and receive paid administrative time to deal with damaged and/or stolen vehicles and/or bicycles.

Article 15: Leaves of Absence
·Your bargaining team reasserted to management that nurses on leave for jury duty should not be removed from schedules unless jury duty is confirmed and that shifts vacated due to release time will not count towards occurrences. 
·Your bargaining team communicated their strong disagreement with management’s proposal to continue to significantly limit paying nurses who participate in arbitration for contract disputes. Currently the limit is two, however that is not a reasonable number that is required under Oregon law.
·Your bargaining team reached some agreements with management regarding paid retirement consulting and domestic violence leave.
·We are still in strong disagreement with management’s proposal to continue to limit bereavement leave. Our bereavement leave has fewer days than nurses working at Providence, St. Charles, and McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center. We need proper paid time off for the loss of family and household members including when travel is required.

Article 5: Definitions
·Your bargaining team is in tentative agreement with adding a new definition to our contract for split positions and cross-trained positions. Your bargaining team stood strong on their proposal to mandate management pay for all necessary training and education for nurses who work on units outside their home unit and nurses who split their FTE between two units. 
·Your bargaining team reasserted that we must strictly define AURN nurses who take temporary assignments vs traveler/agency nurses who are not protected under our agreement.
·We reached agreement on pivot nurses, pending tentative agreement on the full article. Pivot nurse is a new way to define when nurses who outside their own unit, not as a float nurse, specialty pool, or cross-trained nurse, but rather in an area they are qualified to work outside of their normal FTE/MRS position. This could be a nurse in Ambulatory for instance, who used to work in Acute Care or Critical Care who is still qualified to go back and pick up shifts beyond their requirements in their home unit. Many nurses across the hospital have taken on this work during dire staffing situations and we need clear definitions to reduce confusion over this role.
·Your bargaining team stood strong on regulating the length-of-stay for traveler/agency nurses to incentivize the hospital to invest in permanent staffing. 

Management Countered on the following articles:
Article 19- Posting and Filling of Positions
·Posting of Positions- They disagreed with us on flexibility around start and stop times- saying they want to make flexibility to make changes as they see fit. They also disagreed with us on posting additional open positions as soon as management is reasonably aware of more positions being open.
·Unit posting requirements- they agreed with us on adding language about postings being text paged out after the official email posting notification. Though we are in agreement that applying for positions cannot be made via text message.
·Effective Date to Transfer- we agree on employees transferring within 90 days after a position is awarded, unless the nurse and the employer mutually agree to a longer period. No more waiting for 6 months to transfer!
·Transfer Introductory Period- they replaced mutual agreement with extending the introductory period with an additional 3 months or an additional 240 hours worked.
·Transition to Practice Programs- they moved this into another section.

Appendix D- Transition to Practice (TTP) Program
·We had some detailed discussion of how the hiring should be following the posting and filling of positions process for all jobs, along with our proposed definitions for job postings, for specialty fellowship and residency (new graduates).
·We are in agreement on the three pathways that exist- residency learning, specialty fellowship learning and fellowship learning.
·We are still discussing details around when a TTP is considered completed. 
·Management proposed that there should be a 10 week TTP that would have a reimbursement amount of $2083 and that the hour commitment is 1,560 hours worked after the program is completed. We need more information about the difference between orientations vs short TTP programs and why a reimbursement amount needs to be tied to an increasing number of positions as this could decrease recruitment efforts.
·Management was not willing to negotiate protections for workload issues for the TTP Coordinator that impact our members in the TTP program who can end up without enough support.

MOU- #8- Employee Health Care Access Committee
· We are close to agreement on the Employee Healthcare Access Committee being restarted and properly utilized to address health care access issues for our own members to find providers.