Negotiations Teams Update 10/27/23!
8 Bargaining Sessions Completed
1 – Tentative Agreement (TA)
All proposals are available at Labor Relations – RNPA Negotiations
for your review!
During negotiations yesterday, October 26, 2023, we discussed the following:
- Temporary Work Assignment – The County is proposing what they believe is clarifying language to NOT pay travel time and mileage from the nurse’s home to the first location of the workday. In their proposal, travel time would only be paid if the nurse has already arrived at the nurse’s home unit and then given a new assignment.
- The County distributed partial costing-out data they compiled which includes RNPA’s Classification Study increases and included all costs for other bargaining units (CEMA and SEIU) which would receive the RNPA increases based on their individual contract’s realignment language. They are still calculating most of the differentials.
- Personnel files – The County is proposing nurses have access to official SCVH and SCC Personnel files only, but the unit file held by the Nurse Manager would not be accessible to the nurse. They claim that this is already practice, but RNPA does not find this to be true.
- Alternate Shifts – We discussed RNPA’s PERB settlement in reference to the County surveying our members and how it impacts the MOU language.
- Bilingual Pay – RNPA expressed in detail the flaws of telephone testing opposed to in person testing. Testing over the telephone is not realistic, nor does it allow the bilingual nurse to demonstrate the nurse’s ability to translate when the automated program moves on to the next stage of testing when the nurse doesn’t respond fast enough. County employees’ bilingual passing rate is 66%. County using same testing as Kaiser and Stanford. They will look at the passing rate of those hospitals as well.
- Holiday pay – Currently, holidays are built into the accrual factor and part of the PTO bank. We discussed how having holiday pay in a nurse’s PTO accrual factor is a benefit to nurses because the PTO bank can be cashed out at 100% when the nurse separates from the County. Even if the nurse does not work the holiday, all 13 annual holidays are built into the hourly accrual factor and received by the nurse. When compared to other unions, employees of the other unions do not have this same benefit. Some other unions’ holiday pay expires, it does not roll over, and it may not be part of the cash out calculation upon separation or retirement.
- In the next meeting, the County will present on Workplace Violence Prevention.
Tentatively Agreed (TA) to all of the clean-up language that the County proposed in Article 5 -Layoff.
Announcements:
- Attend Rallies on Monday, October 30, 2023!!! Come out and show your unity for a good contract! Wear your BLUE RNPA shirts! We will be at:
SLRH (front entrance courtyard) from 9:00 am to 11:00 am
OCH (Cafeteria Lawn) from 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm
VMC (Renova Park – lawn near the rings) from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm
- Next Negotiation Meeting will be November 13, 2023. We will update you after that!
- Nurses are calling RNPA asking if we are going to go on strike. As of today, we are still bargaining with the County in good faith and hope to reach a fair agreement soon. But In order to conduct a strike, it must be approved by the membership. Therefore, moving forward, the RNPA Board of Directors is preparing for a strike vote in case we are unable to reach an agreement with the County. Watch for more information.
In Solidarity,
The RNPA Board of Directors
Registered Nurses Professional Association
950 S. Bascom Avenue, Suite 2120
San Jose, CA 95128
P: (408) 292-6061
F: (408) 292-4729
[email protected]
www.rnpa.net
www.rnpa.net/contact