Rowan Update, April 19, 2022
HPAE and CWA together, with members of your locals, met with Human Resources and Labor Relations to discuss the evolving Rowan/Virtua Affiliation.
We called out the administration on the way in which this affiliation has been handled so far. The University received and information request, demand to bargain, and cease and desist from subtracting from HPAE. The information request was filled, in part, by Rowan but we still have not been provided with important information about the affiliation.
The University held meetings with the members of our locals on March 29th and the Unions were prevented from attending those meetings. Terms and conditions of employment are a mandatory subject of negotiations, and our members had the rights to have representation at those meetings. We confronted Human Resources and Labor Relations about those meetings and made it very clear that they are in no way to meet with our membership without appropriate Union representation. If you or your co-workers are called into a meeting to discuss your employment, you should insist on having union representation.
Rowan stated that SOM is not profitable enough to bring in the EPIC system on their own and are using this affiliation to update outdated systems. They insist that no final deal has been signed and their anticipation is for that to be completed in December following a current data collection effort by Virtua.
We made it perfectly clear to Rowan that discussions of terms and conditions need to be addressed with joint meetings between the University and the Unions prior to information being directly presented to the general membership. We agreed to meet monthly with the University moving forward and expect dates within the next week.
HPAE and CWA will be meeting on campus this Thursday, April 21st at 12pm to discuss these updates with members. We will be in the IRT conference room at the UEC to provide information and to answer any questions you may have.
In addition, we are scheduling a joint membership meeting via Zoom on Tuesday, April 26th at 6:30pm for those that are not on campus or cannot meet up on Thursday. Please register for the meeting below.
https://aft.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwoce-tqzooHtOjFzuTYvG3NesX9eOh8Etd
Please share information and concerns that you have about the affiliation. We will update you further when we sit down with Rowan again.
In Solidarity,
Deborah Cruz
Rowan Chair, HPAE local 5094