After three full days of bargaining Wednesday-Friday, we have reached agreement on all outstanding issues except wages. A final settlement was only held up by some 11th hour nickel-and-diming on the part of Rutgers.
Management once again rejected all our proposals to date.
We are very close to agreement on many issues. However, Rutgers finally presented a promised counter on out of title work and job reclassifications that we had to spend the bulk of the session reviewing and negotiating over.
After a full day of bargaining, we settled a number of issues and are closer to a contract but still have a number of outstanding items.
We continue to make substantial progress towards a settlement. Persistent membership action has made a difference.
The bargaining committee met in New Brunswick expecting counter-proposals on wages and job security. Despite promising to respond to both at the previous session, Rutgers had no proposals ready
I want to speak today to the impact this budget has on University Hospital, health care quality and access, the Department of Health and enforcement of patient safety laws, the opioid crisis, maternity and infant mortality, and public workers’
Rutgers has signed over its health care operations to RWJBarnabas Health and now RWJBarnabas will be making decisions about the healthcare services you will receive.
We made some progress but the next month will be critical to reaching a fair agreement and winning a good contract.
Once again, management rejected every proposal that we made in the last session, including language on Hostile Work Environment. Their position is that the current policies and systems that the hospital has are working fine.
Your HPAE negotiations committee put together a package of the major job security issues that need to be settled in this contract including Federal Medical Leave (FMLA), seniority, the Barnabas partnership, and adding bumping rights to more job series.
On February 4th 2019, we met with UH management and exchanged several proposals and responses.