Your MCMC-OFNHP bargaining team would like to announce that we have reached a tentative agreement with the Hospital on our first contract at MCMC!
The parties negotiated diligently with the assistance of the mediator, and your bargaining team worked hard to ensure that our new contract provides a pay scale that encourages our members to stay at MCMC. We have to keep our experienced staff here as well as be competitive enough to hire new colleagues. This hospital has traditionally been one of the lowest paying hospitals in the area, but this contract will set a wage scale that includes steps and rewards and acknowledges increases for years of experience and your expertise.
At one point at the table, the economic discussion bogged down and it did not look like we would find a meeting of the minds on the open issues. As your bargaining team, we felt it was important to stand firm on improving our economic position to preserve and make some significant improvements on the issues that benefitted both workers and the hospital. We persevered through our tenacity — especially in the final hours of negotiations late on Friday night.
We are working hard to put together the new terms (the tentative agreement) so you will have an opportunity to review the proposals before voting to ratify the new contract. Shortly we will be scheduling meetings for our members to participate and hear the details, ask questions and vote. Look for more information later this week.
Thanks to all of you who took action to win this contract! Whether you wore a sticker, distributed and displayed yard signs, canvassed The Dalles to educate the community — or any number of other actions that got us here — it all made a difference. Our big fight is behind us, but we must now stand together to implement and police the terms of our contract. If we continue to work together through our newfound union — by joining your union, becoming a steward, attending union meetings, and participating in future actions to maintain the integrity of our agreement — then we will create the kind of workplace that makes us want to come to work and continue to invest in the welfare of our community. We all make the difference. Let’s celebrate this victory together!