HPAE 5094 Updates from your union’s Membership Committee!

Happy October! A chill is in the air, and it’s not just from management giving us the cold shoulder on most of our proposals (including wages, still). We saw around 100 union members join the update meetings last week, and there was some fiery passion that needs to keep burning! Check below for some key updates for the upcoming month, and how you can turn up the heat.

Bottom Line Up Front: Membership committee meeting on 10/7, management “hopes” to give a response on raises and other financials on 10/16 (and you can come see for yourself if they do), and how you can help show your union strength.

Membership Committee Meeting – 10/7 from 12-1pm

We’ve got a packed agenda this month! For the first half hour, we’ll be talking about the three stages of engagement: recruiting new members, engaging existing members, and handling when members want to drop. The second half, we’ll be talking about open bargaining, how to host member drop-ins at your location, and briefly touch on health benefits open enrollment. Register now at https://go.rutgers.edu/63qx1kxf

Open Bargaining – 10/16 starting at 10am

After almost 6 months at the bargaining table, management has indicated that we may finally get a response to our proposal on raises and other financials. Things aren’t going to change at the table without you. Together we need to unite and show our strength and pressure management to come to the table with a fair financial package, not the 0.5% they proposed to us last contract cycle (yes, really). And if they still don’t have anything for us? We need to show them just what we think of that.

The session is tentatively scheduled for 10am to 5pm, but we plan to talk about financials at 11:45am, so if you can only be there part of the time, around then is best. Management has historically started late, wrapped up early, and comes to the table with nothing prepared. In those events, we’ll still be in the caucus room talking about and working on contract action. You do not have to join the whole time! Plan to attend on your free time, be flexible if you can, and we will do our best to communicate updates to registered participants.

Register at https://go.rutgers.edu/ysk2bbp2. If you haven’t joined open bargaining before, we start in a union-only caucus room before going in with management. That room will stay open all day. When management says we’re going on a break or into caucus, be sure to go back to that room!

Petition – Sign ASAP!

We want to deliver this to management around the next opening bargaining session. If you haven’t signed yet, this is a great and simple way to tell management exactly how you feel about the games they’re playing with our livelihoods. If you have signed, have your colleagues? https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/hpae-local-5094-petition-in-support-of-bargaining

Shout Out: Jason and Diely

Our wonderful HPAE staff goes to new employee orientation at Rutgers-Newark, Rutgers-New Brunswick, and University Hospital to talk to union-eligible folks and help them sign up. But you know what makes recruitment at orientation far more effective? You!

Any members can support any of the 3 orientations and we have the stats to back up that people are more likely to join when they hear from union members like you and I. Two of our UH union members have been supporting orientations tirelessly up in Newark, Jason Minott and Diely Martinez and doing an amazing job welcoming in new members and growing your union community. If you want to support orientations like these two superstars, you can sign up at our new and improved SignUpGenius at https://go.rutgers.edu/17n80ijt.

Don’t forget there’s lots of passive ways to show your support too. Did you know you can change your icon on all Microsoft products? What about adding something to your email signature? If you’ve already been using our Zoom background, change your profile pic there, too!

As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me with any questions, comments, or concerns at [email protected]!

In solidarity,

Syd Rosen
HPAE 5094 Membership Chair