National bargaining is supposed to kick off tomorrow in Oakland. Our OFNHP delegates are not going, and here’s why.
Over the past 30 months, OFNHP and our partner unions have worked hard to keep our Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions (CKPU) together and strong headed into 2018 national bargaining, in spite of one local union’s repeated attempts to gain control of the coalition and silence smaller local unions like ours.
SEIU-UHW’s disruptive actions have put our Partnership and our National Agreement with Kaiser in jeopardy.
That’s why, on the recommendation of our OFNHP President and with the full support of our Executive Board, our AFT International President Randi Weingarten has withdrawn from the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions to form a new coalition of unions representing over 50,000 union members working for Kaiser Permanente.
This evening our unions informed senior Kaiser management of our decision to form this new alliance and asked that they recognize our new coalition and negotiate a new National Agreement with us.
There is a lot of work to be done to see this through. Until we've worked out the details with our new coalition partners, we will not be engaging in national bargaining.
In the meantime, our current National Agreement and our local contracts remain in effect until they expire on September 30. That means our wages, benefits, and working conditions will remain the same until then, though we expect to be at the bargaining table long before September.
What our future agreements look like will depend on our unity and our commitment to secure a fair National Agreement and local contracts that protect our patients, our workplace rights, and the benefits our families count on.
This is why it's never been more important to show Kaiser that OFNHP members are united across are worksites and bargaining units. We can do that by proudly displaying our #PatientDefender buttons at work tomorrow!
You can also spread the word online by changing your profile pic here.
Our Executive Board will host a Tele-Town Hall this Thursday at 7:30 pm to answer your questions. Please rsvp to RSVP@ofnhp.org to get your call-in instructions. We'll also be posting updates on OFNHP.org with FAQs.