Show Management We STILL Need a Contract: Wear Your Purple Every Wednesday Starting Wednesday, December 23

Our elected bargaining team is continuing to meet regularly with management. We have gotten some more wins at the table recently:

  1. Break relief at John George

  2. No more last-minute cancellations at San Leandro Hospital

Away from the bargaining table, we got our co-worker Ilona Clark restored to her job in the ICU, by fighting relentlessly through the arbitration process and proving that the discipline she had received for a verbal lapse in a moment of stress was unfair and unreasonable. HR Director Athena Buenconsejo has also announced that she will be leaving AHS. However, we need the Board of Trustees to understand that we are in the middle of a surge, and we need a contract now, so we can get back to work, helping heal the county’s sick and injured, in a working environment that is safe, healthy, and fair for all of us.

To show management that we are still united in our demands for safe staffing, a fair cost of living increase, and no increased healthcare costs, we need every member to wear their purple every Wednesday until we have a contract. Take a photo of yourself in your purple and tag @ahs_seiu_1021 on Instagram or Our Voice on Facebook, so we can boost your message!

Click here to download the flier to print out and post at your worksite.

Recent Wins at the Bargaining Table

Ever since our historic five-day strike, we have heard a different tone at the bargaining table, and have changed the process. We now have one common table, with all three of our bargaining units present, and have begun to bring the best parts of each contract into the others. At the same time, management’s takeaways are coming off of the table.

Because of our strike, we have made more progress in the past month than we made in the entire ten months before that.

The Board of Supervisors will vote on the new Trustees next week. We expect to speed up the process of winning a strong contract once the new Trustees are sworn in and begin their terms of office on December 1.

We are meeting with management again on Monday, November 23.

Recent Wins at the Bargaining Table:

  • Moved 12 people in the General Unit from unbenefitted .4 FTE positions to benefitted .5 FTE position
  • ENDED mandatory daily shift cancellations at San Leandro Hospital
  • RN break relief at John George
  • RNs can move from part-time to fulltime by working additional hours, as General Unit members have been able to do
  • Improved language about discipline for RNs

Show your support for the Physicians Assistants and Nurse Practitioners of East Bay Medical Group who have filed to join us in SEIU 1021! Sign the online petition to tell the Board of Supervisors to recognize these workers as AHS employees before Wednesday, November 25.

http://seiu1021.org/petition

If the Supervisors do the right thing, these PAs and NPs will join the Employee Health RNs and LVNs as our newest members!

Click here to download the flier to print and post at your worksite.

Our Unity Is Getting Results: Board of Supervisors Votes to Demand the Board of Trustees Resign by Nov. 30

After a five-hour hearing on Tuesday, October 20, featuring statements from AHS management and many AHS workers, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted to demand the resignation of the current Alameda Health System Board of Trustees.

Workers on the march during our historic five-day unfair labor practice strike.

Workers on the march during our historic five-day unfair labor practice strike.

This is a huge step forward for our fight for a fair contract and a public healthcare system that works for the community and its employees. AHS management fought this change every step of the way. ER nurse and chapter president John Pearson said “This was as organized as we’ve ever seen management, but when they spoke to the Supervisors, they revealed transparently how disconnected and out of touch they were.”

The Trustees must now submit their resignations or reapply for their positions by November 6, and their resignations will take effect November 30.

The elected bargaining team met with management on Monday of this week. Management has finally started to withdraw some of their shameful proposed cuts, including takeaways around cutting holiday pay, allowing SEIU members to be cancelled before travelers and registry, and giving AHS more control over changing our schedules. If we stay fully united, we can still win a strong contract.

Daily Bargaining Team Q&A Sessions on Zoom

“I’m so inspired by your courage to stand up for what’s right and go on strike!”
-SEIU International President Mary Kay Henry

Click here to download the flier to distribute at your workplace.

WE ARE WINNING

Because of our historic five-day unfair labor practice strike, WE ARE WINNING

After our historic five-day unfair labor practice strike, “It finally feels like a new day at Alameda Health System!” Because of our strike, and because of our unity, we are winning. Since January, our bargaining team has been meeting with management, but management hadn’t budged. Then we had a four-day strike vote with massive turnout. Because of that turnout and the 98% YES vote to strike, AHS was forced to remove Athena Buenconsejo from bargaining. After our strike began, members of the County Board of Supervisors came to our rally to tell the AHS Board of Trustees “Thank you for your service. It’s time to move on.” Watch the video here:

During our strike, AHS finally hired a new negotiator to bargain with our elected bargaining team. Our first bargaining session was Monday, and it was a big change from the past nine months, with meaningful, respectful conversation on both sides. AHS listened to us as we talked about the issues on the table, and committed to rebuilding relationships and establishing trust. Bargaining team member, Halley Darigan, said, “It finally actually feels like a new day at AHS.” All of these changes are because of our strike. We used our power together, with the community on our side, we got great press, and now we are winning. We are scheduling further meetings and working to get a strong contract ASAP.

All of these changes are because of our strike. We used our power together, with the community on our side, we got great press, and now we are winning. We are scheduling further meetings and working to get a strong contract ASAP.

On Monday, October 12, AHS workers rallied outside our workplaces before ending our unfair labor practice strike at 7 a.m. Click here to watch a video of one of the rallies on Facebook.

Click here to download a copy of the flier to print and post at your worksite.

Daily Bargaining Team Q&A Sessions on Zoom

Monday to Friday: 6 p.m.
http://bit.ly/ahsqandamf

Saturday: 10 a.m.
http://bit.ly/ahsquandasat

AHS Management Called Our Unfair Labor Practice Strike Illegal: We Fought Them, and We WON

We gave AHS 10 days advance notice of our strike so it could have time to schedule travelers and managers to cover our work during the strike, and to reschedule surgeries and appointments and alert other facilities in the area that we will need to be on diversion.

AHS wasted 5 of those 10 days of advance notice by doing (apparently) nothing to prepare. In the final hour, it rushed to PERB (a state agency) to try to save itself from its own mistake. It wanted PERB to believe our strike was illegal and issue an injunction to stop it. PERB was not convinced. Instead, we were able to use the PERB process to ensure that the services that we know are critically important will continue to operate during the strike. With the input of knowledgeable members working in the various units, we developed a patient care team that will receive line passes during the strike to help maintain critically important services, so that replacement workers, travelers and managers don’t mess up. That small number of employees designated to receive line passes will receive a call or email from the Union or steward on Monday, October 5, 2020.

Our strike is on! Full steam ahead. And it’s protected by law! AHS is lying when it says that this is an illegal strike. That’s simply not true.

AHS’ Latest Proposal: A Wage Freeze And More Cuts

Once again, AHS management is proposing cuts and takeaways in the middle of a global pandemic. Last week, their proposal to the general unit included the following. The San Leandro and RN bargaining teams expect similar proposals as they meet with management.:

  • A wage freeze

  • Cuts to shift differentials

  • Eliminations of benefits our members have fought for, including specific wins for Respiratory Therapists and Medical Clerks

  • Cuts to bilingual pay

These proposals are completely unacceptable. They attack AHS’ workforce exactly when our community needs us most and would cripple us for years to come. We need to demand community control over AHS immediately. Sign your name to the petition today!

Click here to Sign the Petition

Add your name to this petition to tell the Alameda County Board of Supervisors: Put Public Health in Public Hands!

Click here to download the flier to print out and post at your worksite.

The AHS plan: NO RAISES, NO STAFFING. TAKEAWAYS & LAYOFFS

 The AHS plan: NO RAISES, NO STAFFING. TAKEAWAYS & LAYOFFS 

 We’re fighting for a fair contract. AHS is currently running a $4.5 million operating deficit and is projecting a cash shortfall of almost $300 million. SEIU Local 1021, CNA, and the other AHS unions are demanding that the Alameda County Board of Supervisors take over AHS. Otherwise, our lives will be in the hands of a bunch of unelected volunteers on the Board of Trustees and it will mean cuts, understaffing, and layoffs. We need to put public health in public hands. 

Cutting pay & benefits 

  • Currently members in the PPO plan pay no monthly costs. AHS wants to make us pay 10% for the PPO plan that is now free, starting in January. 

  • No raises. 

  • Cut holiday pay for 10 and 12 hour employees, so no one would get more than 8 hours of holiday pay, and 10 or 12 hour employees would have to use PTO to cover their holidays. 

  • Making it harder for nurses to get missed meal period overtime. (Art 6) 

  • Delete the 2 days of emergency PTO. Art 11 ¶154 

  • The GU & San Leandro chapters participate in the SEIU Joint Education Fund. AHS contributes to the fund, which offers lots of classes, tuition, career counseling and more for our members to be able to move up in their careers and get their continuing education. The Fund just expanded benefits to our SAN members. AHS wants to take it away entirely. (Sec 14.2 ¶205) 

  • Delete rollover of unused ed leave hours from RN MOU. 

  • Delete the right to buy long-term disability with vacation sellback (RN 18.3). 

  • AHS unilaterally took ¶299 B & C out of the 2017 GU MOU, which provided higher shift differentials for classifications in nursing departments. 

  • Delete temporary voluntary reduction of workweek and voluntary time off from Article 7—GU ¶73-79. 

  • Delete industrial sick leave supplement to provide support for members who are hurt at work for an extended period of time. ¶168-172 

Cutting protections/giving the bosses more control and us fewer rights 

  • Remove all safe staffing and Title 22 language from the contract. Allow management to make unilateral changes to staffing without meeting with the union first. 

  • Delete contractual caseload levels for social workers (Article 35) 

  • They want to make it easier to fire people. No more suspensions. Directly from reminder 2 to termination. Allow AHS to bypass reminder 1 for behavior you “should have known was unsatisfactory…” Allow AHS to mix performance, attendance, and conduct discipline—now each type of infraction needs to be its own disciplinary track. Remove our right to have old discipline removed from our personnel files. 

  • Allow AHS discretion to change schedules from 8-10-12 hour shifts. 

  • Delete modified duty from the contract. 

  • Allow AHS to cancel people up to the minute before their shift. (Current contract requires two hours’ notice.) 

  • Delete seniority rights for cancellations of SANs (RN). 

  • AHS unilaterally removed PIPs from ¶412 of the GU MOU. 

  • AHS has the right to approve LOAs 

  • Require 6 weeks’ notice to schedule medical appointments. 

  • Delete flex schedule for PA/NPs (6.16) 

  • Make it harder for nurses to get major holidays off 

  • Delete extra unpaid leave RN 8.20. 

  • Delete leave for special project, leave for exams, leave for selection or transfer, union leave, ed leave for literacy training. 

  • Delete lactation breaks and lactation spaces for RNs. (RN 6.1.1) 

  • Limiting shift trading. (RN 6.11.3) 

Cutting jobs 

  • MAKE LAYOFFS EASIER. 

  • Allow involuntary daily cancellations of FTE employees. 

  • Allow involuntary cancellations of SANs and FTE extra shifts before travelers 

  • Increase AHS rights to lay off members outside of seniority order 

  • Delete recall rights for laid off employees 

  • Delete every weekend benefitted positions (6.13 RN, GU Side Letter #4 for JGPH) 

Cutting union rights 

  • Take away our right to honor another union’s picket line (sympathy strike rights). 

  • Limit scope of grievances to one topic. 

  • Cap the number of shop stewards we can have. 

  • Delete union leave (GU Article 9, ¶116) from GU but not RN. 

SEIU Proposals Rejected by AHS 

AHS refused to sign our contracts in 2017, then changed a bunch of language. Rather than clean up the old contract first, AHS wants to re-write our entire contract from scratch. 

AHS HAS REJECTED OR IGNORED: 

Safe staffing & patient care 

  • Copy Appendix D staffing matrix from RN to GU MOU. (AHS wants to delete entirely.) 

  • Staff John George according to the state-mandated plan of correction to address unsafe staffing 

  • Safety—ensure adequate ventilation in all facilities, protect staff from toxic chemicals. 

  • Stop violating state law by discharging homeless patients in nothing but gowns and socks. 

  • Ensure charge nurse/team leader is out of the count. (RN) 

  • Break relief language in Article 5 to apply to JGPP and Fairmont 

  • Create a dedicated medical/psychiatric unit at Fairmont. 

  • Racial justice impact report to analyze structural racism at AHS. 

  • Create child care facility. 

  • AHS to partner with SEIU to promote local career pipelines to hire from the community 

Pay & Benefits 

  • Raises to keep pace with inflation. 

  • NO LAYOFFS. 

  • Internal pay equities—align pay rates where groups in comparable classifications get paid different amounts. 

  • In-lieu of benefits pay and salary steps for SANs 

  • Add RN bargaining unit to the Joint Employer Education Fund, so that GU & SLH employees can use the fund to become nurses. 

  • Ensure AHS does not try to cut our dependents health benefits again. 

  • Fix PTO accrual so that part-time staff progress in PTO accruals at same rate as full-time.

  • Get training pay for hours rather than full shift only. 

  • Improve protection for payroll errors. 

Protecting our rights 

  • Every other weekend off guaranteed. (GU/SLH) 

  • Right to grieve return from LOA. 

  • Expand contract protections for modified duty to include non-workplace injuries. 

  • Allow part-time RNs who work in excess of their FTE to increase their FTE. 

Attempts to get SLH & GU contracts aligned to move towards equity that AHS rejected:

  • Members in the same classification in GU and SLH get paid different rates, with no logic to the differences. We proposed to pay workers the same for the classification, using whichever rate was higher. AHS said no.

  • The GU contract has strong workplace safety provisions. The current SLH contract has none, and has significant safety problems, particularly related to having staff appropriate and trained to handle violent or unstable patients. AHS rejected. They prefer to continue the current informal practice of paging “any available man” to help.

  • GU and RN contracts currently do not allow involuntary daily cancellations (TLO). Some SLH members get cancelled a lot. AHS wants shift cancellations/TLO for everyone.

  • GU participates in the ACERA pension plan. SLH has a worse pension.

  • The GU contract provides for 4-16 weeks of severance pay for laid off employees. San Leandro only has 2-6 weeks of severance pay. AHS rejected providing equal severance pay to laid off SLH workers.

  • The GU contract has the Workforce Planning Committee and other protections around layoffs. San Leandro doesn’t. AHS wants to make it worse for everyone.

  • GU provides paid holidays separate from the PTO bank. SLH ends with net fewer paid days off. AHS wants to keep it that day.

  • The GU contract allows for the temporary voluntary reduction of hours. AHS rejected extended that to SLH.

Important Calendar Events 

Week of July 6, 2020 

• Friday, July 10 Fairmont / JPG 

Membership update. 

Basketball court near cafeteria, 

2pm to 7 pm 

Week of July 13, 2020 

• Monday, July 13—virtual people’s AHS town hall. RSVP on facebook. 

• Tuesday, July 14—SLH bargaining 

• Wednesday, July 15—all team caucus 

• Friday, July 17 San Antonio park 

Membership meeting 

16th & Foothill Blvd, 2pm to 7 pm 

Week of July 20, 2020 

• Tuesday, July 21—RN bargaining 

• Wednesday, July 22—GU bargaining 

• Friday, July 24 

San Leandro Hospital Membership meeting. Patio area back of the building, 2pm to 7pm 

AHS Bargaining Update for RNs (June 24, 2020)

We Met with Management Again

Here’s What We Got:
More Union-Busting and Contempt for Workers

Their Vision for Us:
No Safe Staffing, More Expensive Health Care, and Worse Holiday Pay

Their Vision for Public Health:
Re-Used N95 Masks and Zero County Oversight

On Tuesday, June 23, we sat down with management again. After passing us 120+ pages of proposals and refusing to give us caucus time to review them, they accused us of bargaining in bad faith. Meanwhile, they continued to show us what real bad-faith bargaining looks like by continuing to refuse to respond to our months-old proposals for safe staffing, job security, and raises.

Management also proposed to take away our right to go on sympathy strike and limit our number of stewards! Our bosses hate our union. If that weren’t enough, they also want to claw back our ability to go on modified duty, potentially forcing us to go on unpaid status when we get sick or hurt.

Make sure you’re getting our emails and text messages: https://bit.ly/2020-get_union_updates.

Bargaining Update June 10, 2020

On Tuesday, June 9, AHS management gave our RN unit a new proposal. Simply put, the proposal was more than one hundred pages of direct assaults on our rights and protections as union members.

AHS proposed to:

  • Eliminate all references to Title 22 in the RN contract, as an attack on our ability to fight for the staffing ratios that keep our quality of care high and our members safe at work

  • Take away or renegotiate contract language it took us years to fight for and win, including Article 2, which prohibits discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of union activity, and protects whistleblowers

  • Limit floating holidays and holiday pay to an 8-hour maximum, even for those who work 10- or 12-hour shifts

  • Eliminate modified duty

  • Take away your ability to roll over ed leave

  • Stop reimbursing for BLS/ACLS/PALS taken outside of AHS

  • Quit paying in service hours for BLS/ACLS/PALS regardless of where it is taken

  • Increase healthcare costs to employees: 10% freedom of choice employee contribution, 10% for all Kaiser plans employee contribution, 5% HSA Independence employee contribution

They also rejected both our proposal to extend the joint employer education fund to the RN unit, so that GU members could use it to become nurses, and our proposals for no layoffs, reduction in hours, or reduced budgeted positions.

At this time of crisis, AHS’ priorities must be to protect its workforce and provide high-quality healthcare to promote the public good. Instead, they’re trying to hurt us as workers and cripple our union. We all need to fight against AHS’ mismanagement and misguided priorities.

Bargaining Update February 7: "We're NOT going to let management tear up our contract!"

This week, the General Unit Bargaining Team met with AHS management on Wednesday and Thursday. Management made proposals to gut our contract, taking away wins it took us years to achieve.

This image is just one example of the contract-gutting proposals management made this week.

This image is just one example of the contract-gutting proposals management made this week.

This is what AHS’ head of labor relations wants our contract to look like: crossouts and cutbacks, instead of worker protections and fair standards. Ruby Sloan, a Mental Health Specialist II at John George and a 30-year member, says “We spent years building our contract and we’re proud of it. We’re not going to let them tear it apart.”

Management also wants to:

  • Make members pay more for health care

  • Base daily cancellations on budgets, not patient care

  • Cancel members before travelers

  • Make it easier for us to get fired

  • Let managers change our schedules

  • Cut holiday pay for part-time workers

  • Eliminate VTO and voluntary reduction of hours

We need to show management that we are united. Purple up every Wednesday and come to San Leandro Hospital on Thursday to show your solidarity.

Show up on Thursday to show our solidarity!

Show up on Thursday to show our solidarity!

Stay Informed

Get Involved

  • Rally at San Leandro Hospital on Thursday, February 13, at noon

  • Purple up every Wednesday!

  • Stay tuned for tabling dates at various worksites

Click here to download the flier to post at your worksite.