Vote Today!

Tuesday, December 20 is the day to vote on the contract!

The contract goes into effect only if the majority of SHARE members who vote, vote Yes. Voting is easy: Just check Yes or No on your ballot. You must be a SHARE member to vote, but you can sign a SHARE member card at the voting place if you need to join.

See the new SHARE Contract Agreement Website for details.

Here are the times and places. See you there!
Tuesday, December 20

Campus
Room
Time
University
Hallway by the
Prescription Center
7:00 am - 4:00 pm
Memorial
Outside the Amphitheater
across from the Cafeteria
7:00 am - 4:00 pm
306 Belmont
Meeting Room I
9:00 am -11:00 am
67 Millbrook (WBC)
Thom McAnn conference room
11:30 am-2:00 pm
Hahnemann
2nd Floor Conference Room
11:30 am-1:30 pm
Biotech 3
Old Secretary’s Room, outside Cytology
11:30 am-1:30 pm
Tri-River
Community Room
9:30-10:30 am
67 Belmont
Surgery
8:00 – 8:30 am
Marlborough
Cancer Center Conference Room
8:30-9:00 am
South County
Pediatrics
9:00-9:30 am
Shrewsbury Family Medicine
Break room
11:30-1:00 pm
Shrewsbury XRay
Break room
1:00-1:30 pm
PTRC
1st floor conference room
2:30-4:00 pm
1 West Boylston
Conference room
2:00-2:30 pm
Vote count
University S2-307 E&F
4:30 – 6:00 pm

Talking About Improvement at the Front Lines in the T&G

If you missed Doug Brown’s contribution to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette’s “As I See It” column this past weekend, it’s worth catching a couple of highlights that affect us as SHARE members. His piece explains to the broader Central Massachusetts community how our hospital is applying “Lean” to patient care, and why.
Doug is President of UMass Memorial Community Hospitals and Chief Administrative Officer. He writes that, “The method employed by ThedaCare [a hospital network based in Wisconsin], commonly known as Lean, is about two fundamental principles: respect for people and continuous improvement.”
Those principles jive nicely with SHARE’s core beliefs: that the employees who do the work firsthand should be the ones who define how that work gets done. And those principles are very much at work in the new SHARE-UMass Memorial Contract Agreement. Frankly, we couldn’t have said it better than Doug Brown did in the T&G:
While seemingly simple, these principles have profound implications for how an organization is managed. Respect for people turns the traditional top-down management style on its head. It recognizes that the best ideas come not from senior leaders, but from those on the front line. That is where value is created in an organization. The job of leaders is to develop systems and tools to unleash those ideas. And then get out of the way.

You can read about more about SHARE’s firsthand impressions of ThedaCare hospital and Lean here on the SHARE blog.

Field Report from the 2016 Institute for Healthcare Improvement Conference

Right now, I’m on a plane home from this year’s IHI conference, and want to get some things down while they’re fresh. It was a fantastic trip. I’ll be coming back to our hospital with new ideas, new connections, new tools, and a number of insights into what’s happening out there in the broader world of health care, and SHARE’s role in that.

This is my first-ever trip to the annual event. I had already learned some important things from IHI, through SHARE reports from past conferences, and from the IHI’s online resources. But I still found myself surprised as I became more aware of just how much the organization does to change lives in meaningful ways.


If you're going to make successful improvements, you
need to make it as easy as possible, and that involves
 SHARE members defining the work that doesn't need
to be done at all. 

I went there excited to talk with folks from other hospitals about SHARE’s new contract agreement. Members of the Kaiser Permanente Labor Management Partnership, including dozens of front-line union members, come out to the east coast for the event, presenting the latest on their own work with Unit-Based Teams. I was eager to compare notes. Beyond that, however, I learned about many more hospitals using teams, in ways similar to those we're introducing in the new SHARE contract. Unsurprisingly, involving front-line employees in decision-making has been the key factor in the success of those teams.

On top of all of the inspiring and practical learning I brought home with me, the conference was in Orlando, very near in Florida to the home where I grew up. Even though this trip was limited pretty much to inside of the conference hotel, I definitely felt the tug that comes along with any homecoming. So good to see the old palmetto-scrub landscape out the window.

Which, unfortunately, brings me to the toughest keynote of the whole event: a presentation by six employees of Orlando Regional Medical Center, caregivers whose lives were changed by their work in their hospital on June 12, 2016, when the Pulse nightclub, which was two blocks from their hospital, became the site of the worst mass shooting event in American history.
The ORMC team explained for us their triage decisions that night. They described wounds like none that their Level I Trauma Center had before encountered, those from weapons of war. The team depicted for us the patients and families who came into their lives that night, and how they and the whole community have worked to take care of each other and make sense of that senselessness.

Every patient who was brought into their Operating Room that night survives to this day. The presenters attribute that to thoughtful planning and thorough practice, and encouraged all of the hospital employees in the audience to keep at their efforts, to be prepared for the worst.

The conference was sobering, inspiring, and highly educational. I’m looking forward to writing and talking about those meaningful, learning moments I experienced. More on all of that soon.

I expect more materials directly from the conference will be posted online soon, and we'll link to them here. In the meanwhile, if you'd like to listen to one of the speakers firsthand, here's Abraham Verghese -- best-selling author, physician, and one of this year’s keynotes. He described the ritual of the relationship between caregivers and patients, and how caregivers need to have the time to give good attention to those patients who sit right in front of them. At the conference, he expanded on many of the ideas from his popular TED talk, which you can watch through the link below:


Free Associate Degrees for SHARE Members: An Update from AFSCME

We just received the following update from our parent organization, AFSCME, about the Free College Benefit. The program offers free Associate Degrees to SHARE members. And, the program has expanded to include Early Childhood Education degrees. Read on for more . . .



Dear SHARE members,

Back in July, we announced a new AFSCME benefit available to you and your family: a free associate degree from Eastern Gateway Community College. Your response has been overwhelming, with nearly 20,000 inquiries made, more than 5,000 applicants and more than 2,000 students currently enrolled in classes. We are thrilled that so many of you are taking advantage of this great benefit.
Having a college degree is more important than ever for getting ahead these days, but tuition costs just keep getting higher and higher. That's why the AFSCME Free College Benefit is absolutely free. You, your spouse, your children and grandchildren can earn a college degree without digging into your own pockets or piling on student debt. And because Eastern Gateway is a public, regionally accredited college, the credits you work hard to earn are transferable to other schools. This can literally save you and your family thousands of dollars.
You won’t be left to figure this out for yourself, either. Every student gets to talk to real people who will help you through the process. The classes are online, so they fit into anyone’s busy schedule, and there are tutors and coaches who make sure you aren’t on your own.
Get a Free Associate Degree
An associate degree can be your pathway to new opportunities, greater responsibility, a better job and higher wages. This is a unique opportunity — available only to AFSCME members, your families and retirees. You can find more information about the benefit and available degree programs here.
You work hard for your community, and that work can often go unsung. The AFSCME Free College Benefit is one more way AFSCME helps members secure the opportunities and the respect you deserve.
Enrollment for the first spring session is now open and Early Childhood Education degrees are now offered. Classes begin on January 17. Don’t wait to start this exciting new program and help grow your career!
In solidarity,
Lee Saunders

AFSCME President

One-on-One Fidelity Retirement Planning

SHARE has learned that Fidelity Retirement Planners will be at various UMass Memorial locations on the dates listed below. They ask that you please consider bringing relevant account statements and any paperwork to help address your questions and needs.

Appointments are required. Fidelity cannot accommodate walk-ins, and urges you to schedule an appointment that is convenient for you. If you don't see your work location listed above, additional UMass Memorial sites will be added soon for appointments in January and February.

To schedule a one-on-one appointment, call Fidelity at (800) 642-7131 or register online at getguidance.fidelity.com




New Contract Agreement Reached!

The SHARE Negotiating Team is proud and happy to announce that we have a tentative agreement with UMass Memorial for a 2-Year Contract. It will go into effect if SHARE members vote Yes.

We encourage you to VOTE YES to ratify this contract on December 20!

The raises in the tentative contract are solid. We are holding onto our health insurance and pension. Equally important, SHARE members told the SHARE Negotiating Team -- in the survey, on the poster, and in many conversations -- that being more respected and having more of a say would improve their day-to-day experience. This contract makes real progress in that direction.

Please continue to the SHARE Contract Agreement Website for the full announcement, as well as details about raises, benefits, Labor Management Partnership, Unit Based Teams, and more. You can also find a listing of Contract Information Meetings. (Information about the specific times and vote locations for the December 20th Ratification is on the way, too.)

SHARE members made it happen! Thank you for your enthusiasm, participation, and support. 

Health Insurance Deadline TONIGHT

If you haven't yet signed up for Health Insurance, it's probably a good idea to stop what you're doing right now and sign up. If you don't sign up today, you will not have health insurance from UMass Memorial in 2017. Before you stop reading this, however, we've learned a couple of important last-minute tidbits:
  • If you have already finished, you should have a confirmation number. If you haven't already printed out your confirmation, we recommend doing so. We have learned that, for some reason, some members who believed they had completed the process did not get registered. Having a copy of your confirmation number will be good peace-of-mind for you, and it's what Human Resources will need to reference if they run into any problems or questions. 
  • The system closes down at 11:59 tonight. Start early, because you won't be able to finish after midnight.
If you still need to sign up or print your confirmation number, here's the link to the MyBenefits website.

Contact SHARE

Because the SHARE staff spends most of its time in the UMass Medical and UMass Memorial buildings, we aren't often by the phones in the SHARE office. If we miss you, we'll get back to you as quickly as possible when you call or email. If you don't know which staff organizer represents your work area, call our general voicemail number and we'll help you out.

SHARE general voicemail: 508-929-4020

SHARE office address: 50 Lake Ave, Worcester MA 01604-1168

SHARE staff phone extensions and email:

Organizer Name       Ext          Email

Bobbi-Jo Lewis              22        bobbi-jo.lewis@theshareunion.org

Carol Hehir                  17         carol.hehir@theshareunion.org

Deb Largesse             23         deb.pawlina@theshareunion.org

Debbie Engvall           15         deb.engvall@theshareunion.org

Elisabeth Szanto           14         elisabeth.szanto@theshareunion.org

Jana Hollingsworth     11         jana.hol@theshareunion.org

Janet Wilder                    13            janet.wilder@theshareunion.org

Kirk Davis                   18         kirk.davis@theshareunion.org

Will Erickson              12         will.erickson@theshareunion.org

SHARE fax: 508-929-4040

Preparing for Winter

Some early predictions suggest that, in our neck of the woods, we're going to experience average to slightly-below-average temperatures this Winter. Of course, it's too early to know how many heavy snowfalls we're going to get.

With that in mind, we're reprinting the post below from last year. We've got a smart weather policy in our contract, and we want it to help your Winter go a little smoother . . .


DO YOU KNOW YOUR DEPARTMENT'S SEVERE WEATHER POLICY?

If you’ve worked at UMass Memorial through a snowy Winter, you probably know that, along with sloppy weather, there comes some confusion. We encourage you to plan ahead, and know what to do when travel conditions get tough.

Weather is coming
Now is a good time to remind your manager that they should cover your severe weather plan in a meeting with all of the staff in a staff meeting. If there is no plan, or it needs updating, we encourage SHARE members to be involved in figuring out what works for their department. See the Severe Weather Policy on page 103 of the SHARE Contract, which includes the following guidelines:
In order for employees to know what their responsibilities are in the case of severe weather, departments are encouraged to develop plans for their areas within the framework of the hospital plan. . . . Employees are encouraged to participate in the development of the plan for their department. Department severe weather plans could include: what staffing level is required in the case of severe weather (such as full staffing, skeletal staffing, or no staffing necessary); how employees will find out if they are required to be at work that day, who to call and how to reach them; and whether there is a difference in their department between the plan for severe weather and the plan for a declared state of emergency. Department managers should review the severe weather plan for their department with all employees annually before winter weather begins.
If you would like help developing or revising the policy for your department, please contact the SHARE office.

Negotiations Update

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

Did You Sign up for Benefits?

At the moment, 440 SHARE members have not yet enrolled for health insurance or other benefits on MyBenefits, according to HR. That number probably includes some who don't get their health insurance through UMass Memorial, but definitely a lot of folks who currently do get their health insurance from here.

 Friday is the deadline to sign up for health insurance -- everyone knows that, right? If you don't enroll by Friday, you won't have health insurance in 2017. SHARE just wants to make sure nobody gets left without health insurance!

Here's the link:
Refer to your 2017 Open Enrollment Guide mailed to your house, or visit MyHR and HRConnect for more info about this year's open enrollment.

Memorial SHARE Members Come Out Singing for a Strong Contract

The Memorial Amphitheater played host today to SHARE members who got an

update about negotiations

, and shared some laughs and smiles in support of our negotiating team. So fun!

We have a couple more

gatherings

 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

SHARE Members Show their Support

SHARE members gathered today outside their building at 67 Millbrook Street to have some fun and show support for the SHARE negotiating team.

Tomorrow (Friday, November 4th) SHARE members will gather at the amphitheater at Memorial, 12:15-12:30. If you work at University, join us on Wednesday, November 9th, 12:15-12:30 in the Old School Lobby by the book store. Don't be late, or you'll miss the fun!

Gatherings to Help Move Negotiations Forward

Join us to show your support, get a quick update about what's going on in negotiations and hear (or sing along!) a couple songs with special SHARE contract negotiations lyrics! Come make your voice heard in support of the SHARE Negotiating Team.

We are negotiating about raises and you can read more here.

Thursday, November 3 - 67 Millbrook, outside by the picnic tables
Friday, November 4 - Memorial amphitheater across from the cafeteria
Wednesday, November 9 - University, Old Medical School Lobby, by the book store
Thursday, November 10 - 306 Belmont, location TBA

All gatherings are short: 12:15-12:30. Don't be late or you'll miss it!

Questions? Call the SHARE office at 508-929-4020.

See you there!

SHARE Negotiations Update: Still Negotiating about Raises


SHARE and UMass Memorial have not yet reached a contract agreement. The biggest remaining issue is raises. SHARE will continue negotiating until we can agree on better numbers. 

What a Good Raise Means for SHARE Members

In the last few weeks, the SHARE Negotiating Team has talked with lots of SHARE members about raises, at lunchtime information meetings and in one-to-one conversations. Here’s a summary of what we are hearing:
  • SHARE Members are Working Harder than Ever: “Do more with less” – we hear it all the time. Many SHARE members feel we’ve never worked harder in our lives than we are working right now. Slim staffing is the rule, not the exception. Some work systems require you to be a hero every day just to do a good job. Given how hard we are working, SHARE members feel our hard work should be recognized with good, solid raises.
  • Equity: When thinking about raises for SHARE folks, management needs to understand the impact of percentage raises for lower paid employees. For example, a 2% raise for the median SHARE member would add $19, before taxes, to each weekly paycheck if they work full time. For SHARE members who make less, that number would be as low as $12 per week, lowering their post-tax raise to single digits. Other unions have robust step raises in addition to their cost-of-living adjustments, moving people through their grade to max. Of course, SHARE members have families to care for, kids who want to go to college, and retirement to save for, just like our higher paid co-workers.
  • Raises are Recognition of our Value: In our current workplace culture, raises are a short-hand for the amount of respect a person or group receives. Many SHARE members, though certainly not all, feel their hard work is not appreciated by department leaders.  Our raise is a message from the hospital about whether our work matters.


Management’s Perspective: Financial Challenges in 2017

Our discussions with UMass Memorial management in negotiations about raises have been respectful. Management has made it clear that they are cautious about raises because of their concern about the hospitals’ finances in the coming year, and because they believe that SHARE members are already paid better than market rates.
  • Reimbursement rate cuts: UMass Memorial senior management recently announced that the non-union staff are getting a 2% bonus for fiscal year 2017, with no raise to their base salaries for now. The memo that described the bonus talks about the financial challenges of about $20 million in Medicaid cuts announced in August by the Baker administration. FY17 will also see cuts to Medicare reimbursements.
  • Epic: UMass Memorial is scheduled to pay $60 million for the Epic software system in FY17. Our hospitals have a huge amount riding on the new Epic system – not just the money. SHARE members often talk about how difficult the current collection of computer systems makes our jobs. We all hope that Epic will make many people’s jobs easier.
  • The “market:” UMass Memorial says that SHARE members are paid more than employees who work for other hospitals. We know that SHARE members are not at the bottom of the local healthcare salary market. SHARE has worked hard over the last 19 years to bring these jobs – PCAs, secretaries, techs, billers, etc. – into the middle class. This is honorable work, and increasingly hard work – and work that our hospitals can’t function without. We deserve to be able to achieve middle class aspirations, like buying a modest house, and sending our kids to college.

Value Add: Raises and How SHARE Can Contribute to Improving Quality

SHARE is offering to partner with UMass Memorial on the hospitals’ priorities of quality and employee engagement. This commitment from the SHARE leaders and members cannot be paired with the lowest raises SHARE members have ever gotten. The current raise structure for SHARE members should be retained, so that SHARE members both keep up with inflation and get credit at least equal to new hires for our years of experience.
  • Unit-Based Teams: Many SHARE members want to be deeply involved in fixing problems in our departments – both to improve care, and to make our jobs easier and more rewarding. The SHARE Negotiating Team has proposed unit-based teams (UBTs) as a way to make Dr. Dickson’s motto of “Best Place to Give Care, Best Place to Get Care” become a reality. Our model is the Kaiser Permanente Labor Management Partnership and their UBTs. 

Unit-based Teams have improved the day-to-day experience of the union members at Kaiser. Kaiser management has found that the return on investment from the employees’ participation is so great that they are committing more and more resources to the Partnership’s work. 
We believe that UMass Memorial can’t achieve the quality of care to which senior leadership aspires without the full participation of SHARE members. The “value add” is substantial. 

  • Lobbying against Medicaid cuts: We understand that reimbursement rates have a big effect on the hospitals’ budget. SHARE has offered to help with lobbying about Medicaid funding cuts. We all want UMass Memorial to get reimbursed as much as possible for the care we provide.

Looking Forward

We are confident that SHARE and UMass Memorial will find a mutually agreeable settlement to the raises question. However, we cannot predict how long that will take. We will negotiate for our raise to be retroactive to October 1st, unless we can negotiate a different solution that is better for SHARE members.

We know that this period of waiting and not knowing can be stressful for SHARE members. The SHARE Negotiating Team will continue to inform you about what’s happening at the bargaining table, and to listen carefully to what you think about it. Thanks to everyone for paying attention, reading the SHARE blog, making time to talk face-to-face, and coming to meetings and events. We may need your help to move this forward – we’ll be in touch.

Signed,
The SHARE Negotiating Team


Sandy Alafberg, Billing

Nancy Bickford, West 3

Sheldon Brown, Accounts Receivable

LeDean Buzzell, Pediatrics Administration

Debbie Clark, Admissions Unit

Kirk Davis, SHARE

Debbie Engvall, SHARE

Will Erickson, SHARE

Kathy Girouard, Cardiac Cath Lab

Jay Hagan, Cat Scan
Carol Hehir, SHARE

Jana Hollingsworth, SHARE

Deb Largesse, SHARE

Bobbi-Jo Lewis, SHARE

Larry Madden, Central Scheduling

Joel Masley, Respiratory Therapy

Sharon Pichierri, Orthopedics Clinic

Maddy Popkin, SHARE

Elisabeth Szanto, SHARE

Janet Wilder, SHARE

SHARE Encourages You to Complete Caregiver Engagement Survey


Please fill out the survey! SHARE wants you to participate in the first system-wide engagement survey at UMass Memorial. This round of surveys builds upon data collected over the past few years, which targeted select areas of the hospital. Your manager will share results for your work area and will work with your team to figure out what aspects of your experience that you’d most like to improve, and how you will do it.

SHARE leaders will also receive the results, and intends to work with hospital leadership to understand what they say about SHARE members' experiences at work. We will compare the results to those of our own recent surveys, involving members to make sense of the data, and use the results to line up improvements that will benefit SHARE members in at work. The more SHARE members fill out the survey, the more useful the results will be.

The survey process is conducted by an outside agency, Press Ganey. You should have gotten get an email from them on October 17, with a link to the survey. You’ll also receive reminder emails that contain the link, in case you deleted the initial email. The survey is confidential, and is designed and administered in ways that ensure participants remain anonymous. In the past, SHARE has heard worries from members about survey confidentiality, but SHARE members have not reported problems with the agency that administered the previous smaller waves of engagement surveys here, Avatar Solutions (which has since been bought by Press Ganey). 

The survey shouldn't take much more than ten minutes, and you are encouraged to do it on work time. Thank you for participating, and helping to create a more complete and accurate overview about the experience of employees at UMass Memorial.

MyHealth Matters . . . It’s Not Too Late to Get $300!

My Health Matters is the UMass Memorial Health Care employee wellness program designed to reward you for taking care of yourself. If you haven’t yet enrolled, it’s not too late. But you have to act quickly.

When you participate in myHealth Matters activities throughout the program year, you earn points. If you earn 1000 points by October 31st, you qualify for a $300 Wellness Reimbursement Account deposit and entry into drawings for prizes.

You can use the program to track your progress--and earn those points--with challenges you select for yourself. Set goals to improve your energy level, nutrition, stress-management, self-knowledge, concern for others, and more.

And, as Jay Hagan, Memorial campus CT Technologist points out, "If you enroll, you can't lose. It's free money. Most of the things you get points for are things you're already doing."

Here's a hot tip to get you started: if you got your flu shot last year, you've already earned 250 points. There are many ways to grow your point-total quickly. You can rack up points if you record that you've gotten your annual physical, or signed up for a walking event, or gotten a dental cleaning, or completed your self-assessment online.
One more tip for everyone participating: the odds are pretty good to win one of the Amazon.com gift cards at the higher levels, so remember to log all of your activities before the drawing.

To login, learn more, sign up for challenges, or download the app for your phone, visit the myHealth Matters website.


Contract Negotiations Update: Getting Close

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!

Questions or suggestions about this website? Email kirk.davis@theshareunion.org