Oregon Nurses Association Bargaining Update
Columbia Memorial Hospital (CMH)
Voice of Nurses Since 1904
Sept. 13, 2019
Continued on page 2
Status of ONA/CMH Negotiations Dear Nurses,
We write to you today, to sadly report that
management refuses to come to federal mediation with
real movement to reach a fair contract. We are asking
that they show up to a mediation we have scheduled
with our federal mediator this Tuesday, Sept. 17, ready
to make reasonable proposals to address the final two
issues on the table. They recently issued an FAQ
document that showed they do not fully understand
what is happening on the ground in our units. As
nurses, we write to our coworkers to share our earnest
hope to reach a fair agreement that we know our
nurses will vote to ratify, because it will make our
hospital a place we can all be proud to work. We hope
that management shares the same commitment.
Below we wanted to speak very specifically about our
final two issues that management has refused to
properly address.
Sincerely,
Kelsey Betts RN FBC nurse & Chairperson of ONA/CMH Executive Committee
Nicholas Bowling RN Surgical Services nurse & Vice Chairperson of ONA/CMH
Executive Committee
SCHEDULES
Changing nurses’ schedules continues to be an issue
at CMH and our nurses need more protections.
We have already shared with members about the
errors made by CMH management in the surgical
block schedule over six months which cost some of our
members one-third of their paychecks.
Just this past week, the roll-out procedure detailed in
our memorandum of understanding (MOU) in surgical
services was not followed. According to the new MOU,
shift lengths were not supposed to change until the
new pay period on Sept. 8, but the schedule was put
out indicating the change would start at the beginning
of the new schedule on Sept. 1. As a result, PACU and
surgery had overtime for hours after the end of the
changed shift length starting Sept. 1. Same day
surgery (SDS) was told their new shift lengths would
be starting Sept. 8 despite the other departments
having already received theirs. During our meeting with
CMH administration this week, management told the
department that they would now grant SDS the
overtime pay as well. However, management only
offered this after nurses were not volunteering to stay
for the longer block days and had to stand up for
themselves. Nurses continue to feel incredibly
frustrated and simply cannot trust that future changes
will be managed properly without protections
guaranteed in our contract.
As more changes are made in the future, we are
concerned about how management’s mistakes will
continue to severely impact our paychecks. We can’t
have management changing part-time employees’
schedules so dramatically due to errors and changes
in the number of core staff without better protections in
our contract. We met for a full day of mediation with
administration to develop the “part-time plus” idea, a
guarantee for nurses to be scheduled at the upper end
of part-time. We felt this was a viable solution and
management indicated they were open to this idea, but
they have since changed their stance.
We cannot have a dock cap without part-time plus. If
one is implemented without the other, our staffing
problems will only get worse. If managers can’t dock
nurses when they hit the cap, managers are more
likely to make major cuts to hours scheduled when
making structural changes to the department or in
times of low census. If we have part-time plus but no
dock cap, managers will guarantee slightly more
scheduled hours for some nurses and then simply
dock them more when making the major structural
changes to the department (because there is no need
due to census).
We are in the middle of a time of change and growth
with multiple departments talking about changing
Oregon Nurses Association | 18765 SW Boones Ferry Road Suite 200 | Tualatin OR 97062 | 1-800-634-3552 within Oregon | www.OregonRN.org
Page 2 Columbia Memorial Hospital (CMH) Newsletter
Status of ONA/CMH Negotiations (continued from page 1)
schedules, patient loads and needs of their units.
Nurses have been harmed too much already to accept
a contract that does not have improved protections
built into it as we move toward even more changes that
management would like to make.
We are still open to discussing other options for what
those protections could look like as we expressed in
our last proposal: “the Association is open to other
ways to protect scheduled hour fluctuations and is
willing to consider other counter proposals that protect
scheduled hours for part-time nurses.” We are not dug
in on any one solution, but we must see management
improve the protections in our contract so nurses don’t
bear the brunt of managers’ mistakes and low census
times.
STAFFING PROTECTIONS
We are open to discussing which parts of safe staffing
should be protected in our contract. CMH nurse
leaders met with Val Hoyle, Oregon Commissioner of
Labor and Industries (BOLI), and are actively speaking
with the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) about how we
can get the staffing law enforced properly.
Commissioner Hoyle finds the hospital’s repeated
disregard for the staffing law very troubling along with
the backlog at OHA. BOLI does not currently enforce
the staffing law but could in future years if things don’t
improve.
Unfortunately, this does not help us right now as
management continues to violate the staffing law. We
would rather handle small issues with Step 1
grievances or a discussion rather than with major
complaints filed with OHA. We understand that
management would like to avoid duplicative processes,
but at the moment, OHA is unable to handle the timely
processing of complaints. Management has told us
they do not intend to violate the law, yet they have
violated it throughout this round of negotiations.
At our last mediation session, we spent the entire
session proving to management that a manager did in
fact issue increased patient loads for night shift in med
surg. We started the mediation session with hospital
administrators accusing us of making things up. We
were told that this is exactly why administration thinks
nurses should not have staffing protections in the
contract.
By the end of the mediation session, management
acknowledged and apologized that they did in fact
issue a new matrix with increased patient loads in that
department without approval from the staffing
committee. We were told that despite this manager’s
mistake, we did not need protections in our contract,
because if we just went to upper management and told
them about what happened, they would fix it. So, we
gave a counter proposal that included a requirement
that we would also make a reasonable attempt to
resolve these issues before filing any grievances.
The next week, while our Vice President of Patient
Services was on vacation, Kendra Gohl, the Director of
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Oregon Nurses Association | 18765 SW Boones Ferry Road Suite 200 | Tualatin OR 97062 | 1-800-634-3552 within Oregon | www.OregonRN.org
Page 3 Columbia Memorial Hospital (CMH) Newsletter
Nursing, went to our medical surgical unit and asked
them to take more patients than their staffing acuity
allowed. Our nurses pointed out the staffing plan matrix
clearly showed they could not. Gohl then challenged
them to prove that every patient was listed in the correct
part of the grid, which our nurses willingly did. Gohl then
told them that they do not have to follow the acuity tool
all the time and that it’s just a guideline.
This is a violation of the law. Managers may not
coerce nurses into violating their staffing plans. Gohl
then said that she would admit the patients for now,
which fit under the acuity at that moment, even though
there would not be enough nurses on night shift in a few
hours to handle that many patients. Our nurses knew
that night shift only had three nurses coming in, (who
are all newer nurses, some on probation) and that those
nurses would feel pressure to accept these unsafe
patient loads instead of being supported in finding a
safe solution. As a result, two of our nurses stayed 16
hours to support their new colleagues and keep the
patients on their units safe.
Is keeping patients at CMH safer than transporting
them for treatment elsewhere? Not when we do not
have the proper staffing levels to care for them. Was
this just another isolated incident between a nurse and
one manager? No. In addition to pressuring nurses in
med surg, Gohl also contacted Kelsey Betts, co-chair
of the staffing committee to discuss the need to admit
more patients. Gohl again stated that the acuity tool is
a guideline, not a rule with a law requiring it to be
followed. This message from management makes it
very clear that we needed added protections in our
contract.
After having management refuse to add any
protections in our contract and then try to violate the
staffing law, we were worried but hopeful that
management would see that this issue is important to
address. But then to have management walk out of
negotiations and refuse to discuss any further
protections, while the Director of Nursing blatantly tells
our nurses that we don’t need to follow our acuity tool,
makes us worry that this is an intentional attempt to
violate the law not just by individual managers but at
the highest levels of the executive team who run this
hospital.
At worst we will have OHA, BOLI and elected leaders
coming in to take action. What we would like to see
happen right now is for some protections to be added
in our contract to be able to have timely resolution to
individual acts by managers who attempt to break the
staffing law.
After all we have been through and continue to see
every single week, we need a faster way to solve these
problems that is guaranteed, not just a verbal promise
to try harder, or a two-year wait from OHA. Our nurses
need that assurance NOW.
Status of ONA/CMH Negotiations (continued from page 2)
See our nurses’ responses to CMH administration’s recently released document, “FAQs About Negotiations Between CMH and Nurses” on the ONA/CMH bargaining unit webpage:
www.OregonRN.org/55
ANNOUNCMENT: In solidarity with CMH nurses, Oregon AFL-CIO will be bringing their delegates from their annual convention in Seaside, OR to Astoria to join us in our march! See the flyer on page 4 for details.
Oregon Nurses Association | 18765 SW Boones Ferry Road Suite 200 | Tualatin OR 97062 | 1-800-634-3552 within Oregon | www.OregonRN.org
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