We are happy to report that negotiations went well this week. SHARE and UMass Memorial have not yet reached agreement, but progress is being made.
Thanks to all the SHARE members who came out to support negotiations over the last month!
Last Thursday, over 170 members gathered enthusiastically
on the University Campus
in support of the SHARE negotiating team
Rad Tech Rich Leufstedt and his
banjo perform his song
"SHARE Contract Song 2016"
at the University Campus gathering
Members of the SHARE Negotiating Team continue to meet with hospital management to reach agreement for our next contract. We are still talking about raises. We have two more negotiating sessions scheduled this week, on Thursday and Friday, where our conversations will be mediated by Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld.
Keep your eyes on the blog. We'll post another update and more information soon . . .
And! Last Friday, more than 70 SHARE members came out
strong at 306 Belmont Street
The Memorial Amphitheater played host today to SHARE members who got an
, and shared some laughs and smiles in support of our negotiating team. So fun!
We have a couple more
lined up next week. Please join us if you can.
University Campus (Old Medical School Lobby, by the book store) Wednesday, November 9, 12:15-12:30
306 Belmont (Cafeteria) Thursday, November 10, 12:15-12:30
The good news is that SHARE and UMass Memorial have finished, or mostly finished, the vast majority of issues that we have been discussing. Now we are talking about raises and a couple other tough issues.
As we described here, most of the side tables in our Interest Based Bargaining negotiations have reported out how they propose to resolve their issue to the main negotiating table. Many of the tables were able to come up with proposals that both union and management are satisfied with. In some cases, they were able to propose something that both sides are excited about -- such as the side table talking about unit-based teams.
Raises, plus any other issue that costs money, are usually the last topic that gets resolved in negotiations. Right now, from SHARE's point of view, the numbers that management is thinking about are too low, so we have to keep working on it. From management's point of view, there are big financial challenges coming in 2017:
Possible Medicaid cuts of $20-25 million
Medicare cuts of $16 million for UMass Memorial, for taking care of the same number of patients
SHARE and UMass Memorial are meeting to negotiate next week. We are hopeful that we can find agreement about raises soon.
Of course, when we do come to an agreement, you will be the first to know!
Our negotiations updates wouldn’t be complete if they didn’t touch on the fantastic success of the SHARE 2016 Signature Poster. We had a great time celebrating at the “Post Your Poster” events, and it’s exciting to see the large posters hanging in departments throughout the system, and the smaller versions hanging in work spaces all over. (If you’d like to print a small version, click
.)
SHARE members signed onto the goals of our 2016 contract negotiations: To improve the day-to-day experience of SHARE members at work.
Through individual conversations, and many information meetings, SHARE organizers, Negotiating Team, and Reps worked hard to talk with every member. This gives the SHARE negotiators the experiences, opinions and support of hundreds of members to draw on as we talk with management negotiators. The poster now stands as a beautiful visual representation of that collective knowledge and support.
This isn’t the first time that SHARE has created a signature poster at negotiations-time. It’s always an inspiring moment to unveil the many names of our members alongside one another. The SHARE 2016 Signature Poster is bigger than ever: 2100 SHARE members! That's 80% of the employees currently in SHARE.
The poster is an impressive gift that SHARE members give to one another to show that we are standing together. We also delivered posters to the individuals on the management negotiating team, as a clear indication that SHARE members support the priorities that the SHARE Negotiating Team is bringing to the table.
Management's Response Reflects our Changing Relationship
Perhaps because we’re using a model of Interest-Based Bargaining in Negotiations, we found that members of the management team welcomed the posters, and were happy to have them hanging in their departments.
In our negotiations, there’s broad agreement around the idea that employees need to be directly involved in improving our hospital, and welcomed into important decision-making processes. Although we’ve still got lots of work to do to make those ideas a reality, we take the enthusiasm around our poster as a meaningful sign of things to come.
Also different this time around: SHARE is now on Facebook! Connect with us there, where the poster serves as the backdrop for smiling SHARE faces, and share your support for your union on your own social media profiles. Check out the SHARE Facebook page
SHARE Hospital 2016 Negotiations
.
SHARE 2016 Post Your Poster
Distribution Locations and Times
❤
Sept 19
(Mon)
– 11:30-1:30 Memorial Campus, Memorial 1 Conference Room
Sept 20
(Tues)
– 7:30-9:00 WBC, 5th Floor
Sept 20
(Tues)
– 11:30-1:30 University Campus,
old front entrance hallway by the Prescription Center
Sept 22
(Thurs)
– 11:30-1:30 Hahnemann Campus, 2nd floor conference room
(We are
booking a room at 306 Belmont as we speak.)
|
In a NUTSHELL
Wednesday, August 31st marked the SHARE Negotiating Team's fifth all-day contract negotiations session UMass Memorial.
We talked about the disciplinary process, and the problem-solving process. (The disciplinary steps are listed in the contract -- most people call it "being written up." They start with counseling, and go up to termination. The problem solving process is the steps that Human Resources and SHARE use to discuss and agree or disagree about the level of discipline that a SHARE member gets if their manager or the hospital thinks they did something wrong.)
In addition, members of the Peer-Slotted Scales side table reported back to the main table about options that could create more equity and clarity among the mostly techs job titles that are peer-slotted.
For more detail about this week's session, please read on.
DISCIPLINE
SHARE and management both wanted to talk about how to improve the disciplinary process. Management wanted to talk about timelines, and making sure the process keeps moving.
SHARE wants to bring some of the ideas from lean organizations to how we use discipline:
Mistakes should be viewed as an opportunity to improve.
Moving away from a "culture of shame and blame" and focusing more on fixing the systems that make it easy to make mistakes.
SHARE and UMass Memorial don't always agree about how much discipline a SHARE member should get. However, we find that we do have interests in common:
Respect for SHARE members -- We talked about how to treat SHARE members whose performance or behavior is the subject of a disciplinary meeting.
Interest-Based Processes -- We choose to try to resolve the problem and help the SHARE member and manager move forward, rather than to emphasize an adversarial approach.
Keeping discipline as local and informal as possible, to help supervisors and SHARE employees resolve issues before they grow and get worse.
Transparency and good communication between Human Resources and SHARE, especially when we disagree.
Balancing the need for consistency in discipline with the flexibility to recognize the uniqueness of each person and each situation.
September Negotiations
SHARE and UMass Memorial both want to finish by the expiration of our contract, September 30th. (Of course, making sure the right things are in the contract is more important to SHARE than finishing on time!) We've agreed to add several more days of negotiations in September to try to meet our timeline.
SHARE members sometimes become frustrated by what they see as "gray areas" in the contract. In an attempt to fix some of these issues, SHARE has made a proposal in contract negotiations to systematize several department-level decisions in black-and-white.
Why the Gray?
SHARE represents almost two hundred job titles, in departments ranging from the tiny variety with two secretaries who work day shift, to enormous departments such as the Emergency Room, which has seventy-four SHARE members, in a variety of jobs, working shifts 24/7. That range leads to some complex challenges. For example, how do you write a vacation policy that would serve all those departments well, especially since they all start off with different ways of handling vacations?
SHARE's answer to that question is to emphasize the input of SHARE members in the department. The SHARE contract has always said that the way vacations are scheduled should be decided in the department, in discussions between the local SHARE members and the local managers. Our position has been that department policies will be different, and differences between departments are ok, as long as the SHARE members in each department have a say.
Most often, where SHARE encounters problems, it's not because of differences between departments, it's because of confusion. In some departments, the vacation policy is very clear because it's written down clearly. If a new manager or a group of SHARE members wants to change the policy because things have changed, they can involve everyone in that discussion. All good.
In other departments, however, the vacation policy isn't written down, and SHARE members get surprised by how it happens each year, or because changes get made without involving staff.
Developing a System for Clarifying and Including SHARE Member Input
SHARE is proposing that every department make sure they have a written policy for the parts of the contract that are left up to SHARE members and their managers to work out in the department. We'd avoid a lot of confusion and problems. SHARE and HR would provide help for any department having a tough time reaching a consensus agreement. We are working toward an agreement that would create deadlines and accountability in order to make sure these policies get documented.
(We also discussed absenteeism and the Massachusetts Earned Sick law at negotiations this week.)
THIS WEEK, in a NUTSHELL
SHARE and UMass Memorial had our second contract negotiations session on Wednesday, August 10. As we reported last week, these negotiations continue to feel different from past negotiations. One key difference is the use of “co-facilitation,” a new process involving one union and one management leader to steer each discussion. This week we continued our focus on issues from the previous session:
Interactions between SHARE members and supervisors and managers, which SHARE brought to the table. This week, Tod Wiesman (AVP, Performance, Learning, and Education) addressed the negotiators; he described the ideas that the hospital’s executive leadership is developing to train and cultivate hospital leaders.
Increasing flexibility for cross-campus floating, which management brought to the table. This week, five front-line managers were brought in to describe their interests in floating SHARE employees. We also established an additional side table to drill down further on the issue of floating.
We started with 2 difficult issues, where managers and union leaders start from very different places. We are working to understand each other, and to try to find common ground.
For more info, read on...
WHY ARE THESE NEGOTIATIONS DIFFERENT?
Of course, every round of negotiations will feel different. In the three or so years between contracts, things change. Each negotiations, SHARE welcomes a few new members to its team, and misses a few from before. That said, our team remains relatively constant: a majority of our team members have negotiated before. On the flip side, UMass Memorial has an entirely new Executive Leadership team since our previous negotiations, and the leadership of the hospital’s Labor Relations department has completely turned over since our last negotiations. This results in a new management negotiating team. While many of the members of their team bring significant experience to the table, the leaders of their team are experiencing Interest Based Bargaining for the first time.
The teams at the main table are also bigger than we’ve had in the past. This has the advantage of people bringing experiences from a wide range of departments to the discussion. Management's team is a combination of Human Resources people, and front-line and middle managers.
Though we are trying to use Interest Based Bargaining, we can't leave history behind entirely, and it’s easy to fall into old habits of traditional bargaining. We’re all working to establish good foundations for ongoing relationships, as we tackle some of the most ambitious subjects SHARE has addressed in negotiations.
A New Experiment: Co-Facilitation
One part of these negotiations that is new to everyone involved is “co-facilitation.” Our early training sessions and initial bargaining session were led by a facilitator, Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld. He trained two individuals from each side to act as neutrals, guiding the discussions about particular topics. The facilitators are:
Myra Shah, UMMMC Human Resources
Jeff Mogan, UMMMC Labor Relations
Will Erickson, SHARE
Elisabeth Szanto, SHARE
Although the facilitators each come from within the teams of negotiators, when they’re in the role of co-facilitator, they put on a different hat. Their job is to make sure that the conversation is flowing, and that we’re driving toward conclusions efficiently. They also help to make sure that notes are being captured accurately. (One other unique aspect of this negotiations is that notes are being taken and displayed, in real time, on an overhead projector.)
KEEP INVOLVED
We’ll keep the updates coming on the blog. To learn more, and weigh in about either of the topics we’ve discussed, and about what topics are coming up, please join us at an upcoming SHARE Information Meeting about Contract Negotiations.
SHARE and UMass Memorial had their first contract negotiations session last Wednesday. For those of us on the SHARE Negotiating Team who have negotiated several contracts before this, this session seemed really different. Our training on Interest Based Bargaining, and our choice to have a facilitator to run negotiations, are positive changes.
Here’s what we accomplished at our first session:
Set up side tables to negotiations to work on specific issues.
Mapped out a schedule of when each issue will be discussed. We’ve never done this before, and we think it will help make sure we are moving forward quickly.
Began discussions about 2 issues:
Interactions between SHARE members and supervisors and managers, which SHARE brought to the table.
Increasing flexibility for cross-campus floating, which management brought to the table.
We worked hard to understand each other’s interests in bringing this issue forward, and to begin brainstorm solutions that everyone might be able to agree to. No agreements were made on either issue yet.
For more info about either of these 2 topics and about what topics are being discussed at negotiations, or to put in your opinion, please join us at SHARE Information Meetings about Contract Negotiations.
When UMass and then Memorial employees voted to form the SHARE union, the main goal was participation. People wanted a say in decisions that affect them at work.
With a merger, and with healthcare changing rapidly all around us since, there have been many decisions being made that affect SHARE members. As a new union and in the 18 years since those votes, we’ve checked off most of “the biggies” from our list:
SHARE members wanted to make raises predictable, with raises every year, and a salary system that was fair, transparent, and moved people up to grade max over time.
SHARE members wanted to hold onto the benefits they had, in spite of the merger, especially:
Health insurance, keeping the 85%/15% premium split the state workers had had.
A defined benefit pension.
SHARE members wanted to land safely in new jobs when there were layoffs, especially in the highly uncertain times of the early merger. And we wanted to feel that seniority was valued equally no matter which campus you came from.
SHARE members from Memorial and UMass wanted to have the same policies across campuses, without going to the lowest-common-denominators among those policies. And we wanted to continually improve on these policies.
We all know that there’s plenty more we can do to improve even further on those goals. Still, our achievements have been significant and hard-won. Congratulations to all of us for sticking together when our union has faced hard times and hard negotiations.
Changing How it Feels to Come to Work
While we have steadily, persistently ticked the goals off our list, there’s one important nut that we haven’t cracked: We really want to change how it feels to come to work every day.
We want to save lives and improve patient health to the best of our ability.
We want patients’ experience -- from making an appointment to paying the bill – to go smoothly and give the patients what they need.
We want to have fun at work
We want to be able brag to our neighbors that we work at UMass Memorial, to have the respect of our peers and leaders, and to leave work consistently with our heads held high.
SHARE wants to focus on that problem -- how to re-imagine and improve our entire work culture -- in our next contract negotiations.
Many forces combine to cause our work to be stressful and frustrating:
Constant change, and financial pressure that leads to “doing more with less”
Work systems that are complicated and wasteful rather than clear and efficient
An old culture of “command and control,” and a “shame and blame” approach to problems that make positive teamwork tough to establish
Changing how it feels to come to work is not a simple goal. We have lots to figure out, and we may need to try several approaches before we figure out what works.
We Need Your Ideas!
We hope that all SHARE members will take part in this conversation as we prepare to tackle this difficult set of problems. We are starting with a survey for all SHARE members to get your thoughts, questions, concerns, and ideas.
We will negotiate about raises and benefits too – so there will be a lot going on in this coming year. We will set up lunch-time SHARE information meetings across the hospital’s campuses in the new year. You can also contact your SHARE reps and organizers through the SHARE office any time.
And of course, we will post updates here on this blog. Stay tuned…
Questions or suggestions about this website? Email kirk.davis@theshareunion.org
