We left day seven feeling extremely disappointed with our negotiations with management. They responded to our economic counters essentially rejecting all of them except for proposing to increase education hours. Check out some of what we received highlighted below.

Our bargaining team expressed significant frustration across to management regarding changes to Aetna. As a reminder, our team presented a comprehensive presentation sharing direct feedback from our nurses, nurses spoke at our bargaining table about real-life impacts from the change, and we used this as the basis for our proposal to revert to our previous plan.

• The Employer responded with a worse proposal that allowed them full authority to change all aspects of our insurance.

We re-proposed our language with an explicit ask for management to provide us the reasons on WHY they couldn’t go back and what they can and can’t do with the insurance plans.

• Today they reiterated their proposal to maintain full authority to change all aspects of insurance. Management also provided no additional information for what they can and can’t do with our insurance plans to mitigate the damage they’ve done to our nurses.

What progress has been made?

Our union sent proposals to the Employer in Articles 4 and 5 including definitions of charge nurses, resident nurses, and fellow nurses. We continue to try and find alignment in language related to Articles 8 and 9 related to hours of work, weekend work, floating, low census, and disciplinary action timelines.

What else should I know?

Our union has filed TWO charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The NLRB is the federal agency responsible for investigating and enforcing complaints of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) being violated. We have submitted our evidence for these charges and are waiting a response from the NLRB. Our charges include

• Interfering with workers’ section 7 rights in the NLRA and refusing to collectively bargain with WSNA, by prohibiting nurses from wearing T-shirts with union insignia in the workplace and by unilaterally imposing changes in its dress code without affording WSNA an opportunity to bargain with respect to such changes and the impact on Employees.
• Interfering with workers’ Section 7 protected rights and discriminately enforcing its policies against the Union and against protected, concerted activities. Specifically, the Employer has interfered with workers’ ability to engage in Section 7 activities in the cafeteria, which is open to the public, and which has historically been used for protected, concerted activities, and discriminated against the Union for use of the cafeteria while allowing other, non-work related activities to continue happening.

In short, we see Sacred Heart allowing others to freely violate the dress code, but our nurses are punished for wearing union shirts. We have also received aggressive communications alleging we are violating our contract about how we use our cafeteria time. We strongly feel these violate the National Labor Relations Act and will share updates as the charges progress.

Thank you to our observer nurses and community partners!

Our bargaining team has a HUGE thank you to Mudslinger’s Coffee. They sponsored coffee for our team this morning and we appreciate having the community support in our contract campaign.

We were fortunate to have nearly 20 nurse observers today supporting our bargaining. Our perioperative nurses turned out today alongside our clinical documentation specialist nurses as well!

What Can I Do to Help?

1. Be an observer- sign up today to observe our contract negotiations. Half day and full day sign up available. Next sessions include January 27 and February 5.
2. Attend our after bargaining union meetings- Our team following each bargaining session will hold a virtual meeting for nurses to get real-time updates from that day. Meetings held at 6pm and 8pm on bargaining dates.
3. Become a Steward- Are you comfortable with your contract? Are you someone with whom your colleagues ask questions to about our union or contract? Step up your game and help us strengthen our Union at Sacred Heart. One hour training provided on an individual basis- sign up today.

Questions? Contact one of your local officers on your homepage or your WSNA Nurse Representative Alle Machorro at amachorro@wsna.org.