In our first mediation since calling impasse, management brought three guests to the table, CFO Lawrence Furnstahl, General Counsel Alice Cuprill Comas, and CNE Brooke Baldwin. In a rather uneventful dialogue, Lawrence Furnstahl states that he remembers the conversation at bargaining on April 12 differently than the 200 nurse observers and AURN bargaining team and continues to insist that he doesn't think the acquisition of Legacy will impact our negotiations or nurses at OHSU. The conversation about the Legacy merger/acquisition hardly shed more light on the situation than we received in the letter last week. While we had many questions for the CFO, general counsel, and management, the most common answer we received was consistent with executive leadership not having information for us at this time. The following information was reaffirmed:
- This is a non-binding agreement, and many things would have to be figured out.
- No changes to operations would be expected for 1-3 years.
- Legacy staff would not be absorbed into the OHSU system until 2024 at the earliest.
- Management stated they would negotiate any changes to our working conditions.
- They plan to uphold the integrity of our CBA once it has been reached.
While we spent the entire day attempting to find solutions to reach an agreement, your bargaining team felt discouraged by the progress at the table. We are asking you all to continue working toward reaching our goal of getting all ONA-represented nurses to attend one of the upcoming
virtual Strike Schools. We ask that you attend one of these sessions to learn about why we have not been able to reach an agreement with management and ask any questions you have about the possibility of an upcoming Strike Authorization Vote and/or Strike. If you haven’t already, you must
update your info to make sure you receive strike votes or ratification votes.
We are also asking all ONA-represented nurses at OHSU to fill out the
Strike Pledge Survey, so we know how to move forward to represent you the best we can. Your opinions are very important to us, and we ask that you answer the questions as honestly as possible. We will keep your answers confidential and use the collective responses to move forward with negotiations.
We want to thank you all for the amazing turnout to all our actions and Strike Schools so far! We are inspired by you and will continue to do everything we can to reach a fair agreement with management.
Both sides have agreed to hold further mediation on August 29, and Sept. 13-15 before the 30-day cooling-off window ends.
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