Our AURN Bargaining team met with management for our fourth bargaining session at our ONA office in Tualatin yesterday. The bargaining day had some productive and helpful moments, but also had some moments of disappointment and frustration in not being heard by management. We discussed our first of many staffing issues across the hospital, addressed improvements needed in the TPP program, and made progress on learning more about the struggles in our quickly growing Home Infusion program. Additionally, we made further preparations for the weeks ahead where our top bargaining priorities around staffing, workplace safety, retention, justice/equity/inclusion, and moral injury will be addressed. We hope that members will continue to pack the bargaining room!

Unsafe Staffing!
A big thank you to our labor and delivery (L&D) nurses who traveled to our session to hear management’s response to our proposal regarding call for their unit. Management’s proposal was disappointing, and our nurses felt they were not fully heard. Management stated that they disagreed with our interpretation of the agreed upon staffing plan, which drove our original proposal.

Our Hospital Nurse Staffing Co-Chair Erica Swartz attended bargaining to observe and stated: “I share in our bargaining team’s confusion over how management does not understand a clearly written staffing plan. It was approved unanimously by both management and nurse reps that serve on the Hospital Nurse Staffing Committee, yet the unit is still without enough baseline FTE to safely follow the staffing plan. L&D ran a successful meal and break pilot, but they aren’t receiving their dedicated meal and rest breaks. The use of an on-call system to fill baseline staffing is unsafe, those nurses are up to 60 minutes away from the hospital when they are needed for emergency situations.”

For example, the plan calls for 13 nurses at 7 p.m., but management will not approve enough FTE to follow what they agreed to. Instead, they make call nurses fill baseline staffing. In addition, management said that a side letter superseded a relevant section of our contract. Our attorney and we disagree - there would need to be specific language stating that the side letter language replaces the contract language for L&D that defines what call can be used for.

In addition, other hospitals in the area do not have a mandatory call system for labor and delivery nurses. Our L&D nurses also laid out the data to hire more nurses to meet baseline staffing - 7.63 FTE specifically. Rather than provide the necessary FTE to fulfill the staffing plan they agreed to, they said in March they plan to bring a consultant who will spend months reassessing everything. For many years they have used this delay tactic rather than safely staffing a unit. The funds spent on this consultant could easily be put towards properly staffing the unit right now.

Later, we proposed a side letter for a maternal newborn float pool because float pools also help fill holes in staffing. We wanted to be proactive in helping reduce the inappropriate use of call to fill baseline staffing. We actually reached an agreement with management seven months ago on this, yet management refused to properly negotiate a fair way to implement the float pool. This plan includes establishing a float pool with differentials, an orientation schedule and voluntary call. We hope management will negotiate a fair way to implement this and get it in place right away.

Collectively, we are frustrated with how management handled this L&D staffing violation, but we are ready to keep pressing them to do the right thing. We know that this fight is not just about L&D but respecting our staffing plans in the entire hospital. We stand together on behalf of every nurse who is asked to take unsafe assignments. We will continue this struggle in the coming month as we go to the state legislature and demand safe staffing for all nurses across the state of Oregon.

Transition to Practice
We made our opening proposal on the Transition to Practice Program, which resides in Appendix D. We added language that clarifies when the program is completed, clearer definitions, when the hours start counting and the UBNPC's involvement in the new nurse’s success. We spoke out strongly in favor of shared governance to give nurses at UBNPC a greater voice in helping nurses completing the TPP program.

Home Infusion
Management also gave us a proposal for home infusion, making amendments to the mileage section, which appears to be increasing the amount of mileage the nurses would receive. We have reached out to their unit representative to discuss their proposal and prepare our response.

Planning for What’s Ahead
In anticipation of financials that need to be proposed by early March, we are anxiously awaiting management’s response to shift incentives. We hope their incentive proposal will be given to us in the next session.

Our next bargaining session is Wednesday, January 25 at the OHSU Waterfront Campus. We would love to have a room full of observers again, as our packed room last week helped us feel more heard by management. Please show up at 9:30 a.m. at the Knight Cancer Center, 2720 South Moody Ave, Room 1011.

Mark your calendars to join us on February 1 at the ONA office (18765 SW Boones Ferry Rd. 3rd Floor, Tualatin) at 9:30 a.m. to discuss workplace safety and watch for an announcement to join virtually in March for our big financial proposals.