9/26/26 Bargaining updates
As most everyone knows, Rachel and Joseph’s employment at Pathfinders ends at the end of this week. Please congratulate Joseph on his well-earned retirement! Rachel has been laid off and their position has been eliminated. Rachel does have recall rights through the MOU we signed at the end of the summer over layoffs, so we hope that this is a temporary departure and that we’ll have Rachel back soon.
That said, our bargaining committee is going to be shy a couple of people. Please consider joining the bargaining committee and helping us get over the finish line on this contract!
We emailed out the proposal tracker that shows different items that have been proposed, whether we’ve reached an agreement (green) or if its still in play (yellow). Yellow highlights shows who’s turn is it to respond to the topic. As you can see, we have a lot of items tentatively agreed to (“TA’d”). I’m also attaching those TA’s for you to review if you’d like – these are the things we’ve agreed to for a contract. We’re getting close to finishing out the “non-economic” items and then we’ll be moving into the economics (pay, PTO, etc)
What’s happening at the table – there are some items that we keep going back and forth on. PF is fairly dug in and we’re trying to move them towards us. These are:
Discipline. PF doesn’t want to change much about the disciplinary process. We’re trying to get actual progressive discipline that’s defined and that don’t follow you your entire career. A big issue has been HIPAA, where the current policy has been immediate termination for any HIPAA violation. We’ve been working hard to explain why this doesn’t make sense and going through the actual law to show how they handle violations – which is much less severe than the current practice.
We’re also going back and forth on how many steps are in a discipline chain. We’ve proposed five (Verbal warning, written warning, second written warning, unpaid suspension, termination). They’re going for four (Verbal, Written, Unpaid Suspension, Termination). The other issue is when do violations “fall off”? If you correct your behavior, how long until the discipline is a new thing and not a continuation of the same offense? They proposed 16 months to us; we started with 6 months and moved to 9 months. Pretty sure they want to end up at 12 months.Resignation. The current practice is that Pathfinders can terminate you immediately upon you giving them notice that you’re resigning. We proposed that if you give them 2 weeks notice, they honor your two weeks and you can work through it. They’ve rejected that a number of times and keep saying that it needs to be dependent on what they need. We’re trying to come up with something to protect folks who are moving on.
Competitive Hiring vs Job Bidding. The current process is “open and competitive” hiring, with no preference for existing employees. We proposed a seniority job-bid, which means that there’s a sign-up list for open jobs. The job would go to the person who is qualified and has the most seniority (i.e. been there the longest). The point of that is to avoid favoritism and allow people to build a career at PF. Pathfinders has been very against this proposal and wants to retain the authority to decide who gets any job.
“Union security” – e.g., dues check-off. Its standard in contracts for the employer to withhold dues money and send it to the union. They’re saying that its too great a burden on HR to have to do this. We’ve pointed out that they do things like Sunshine Club and United Way deductions.
We haven’t gotten responses, but we also proposed language on layoffs and leaves of absence, including FMLA. Layoffs we’ve dealt with a few times this year, so I think we have a basic framework but we’ll see what they come back with. I’ve had a half dozen people come to me this year with questions about FMLA, so we proposed some language to streamline FMLA and make it clear to both the employee and PF what’s supposed to happen.
Depending on how things go, I’d estimate we’re past the halfway point on the bargain. There will definitely need to be attention to the specific issues at the Shelter, and of course the PAY. Most of the bones of the contract there.
If you have any thoughts, questions, or concerns please let us know.