Day 3 of 2010 National Bargaining

Raises, no takeaways, and create long term job security by expanding the Partnership externally. These are the three big issues we, as labor, all agree we want to get out of National Bargaining. Specifically:

Raises across the board.
No takeaways, including our sick leave.
Expanding the Partnership jointly with management to include capturing our market share of the 32 million soon-to-be-insured Americans, thereby "growing Kaiser's membership" and creating long term job security.

As we are in Interest Based Bargaining, the goal of today was for labor and management to finish developing our interests separately and then to present them to each other and try to "understand" each other’s perspective. The goal was not necessarily to agree with each others interests but at least to understand them. Some groups were able to finish, others were not.

Some groups came up with lists of 34 Interests and others distilled them down to smaller categories. None of the groups were able to move on to the next step in the process where we would have moved towards gaining consensus with management on common options.

The Attendance CIC labor participants related that one of the first interests management presented was to put everyone on PTO and stop giving us our sick time at the beginning of the year. Labor and management in this group also chose to disregard the process and create a list of interests together, instead of separately. Labor is very clear that "no takeaways" includes not changing our current vacation/sick time structure.

The Workforce Development CIC (Central Issues Committee) apparently had a very colorful day, debating and developing their Interests.

The PSP CIC reported that they also worked to develop their interests and did multiple information requests.

In the LMP CIC, I was surprised at how similar our interests were to managements. Basically we had two categories: One for internal partnership interests and one for external partnership interests.

The theme that seemed to echo through all of the CIC's was that the National Agreement is a sound document that doesn't necessarily need to be changed. That said, it does need to be actualized at every level in Kaiser, and by all levels of management and executives.

Ideas such as having the National Agreement signed, managers getting annual Partnership training and competency evaluations on their partnering behaviors implemented by labor, and having their Partnership performance tied into their bonuses were all discussed.

Accountability is a huge issue around the National Agreement and one that is shared by all four CIC's.

The day wrapped up in a large labor caucus where all had a chance to voice concerns, observation, and suggestions.

The next bargaining session is April 20-22 in San Francisco.

In Unity,
Rachelle