Oregon Nurses Association Bargaining Update

Columbia Memorial Hospital (CMH)

Voice of Nurses Since 1904

Sept. 13, 2019

Continued on page 2

Status of ONA/CMH Negotiations Dear Nurses,

We write to you today, to sadly report that

management refuses to come to federal mediation with

real movement to reach a fair contract. We are asking

that they show up to a mediation we have scheduled

with our federal mediator this Tuesday, Sept. 17, ready

to make reasonable proposals to address the final two

issues on the table. They recently issued an FAQ

document that showed they do not fully understand

what is happening on the ground in our units. As

nurses, we write to our coworkers to share our earnest

hope to reach a fair agreement that we know our

nurses will vote to ratify, because it will make our

hospital a place we can all be proud to work. We hope

that management shares the same commitment.

Below we wanted to speak very specifically about our

final two issues that management has refused to

properly address.

Sincerely,

Kelsey Betts RN FBC nurse & Chairperson of ONA/CMH Executive Committee

Nicholas Bowling RN Surgical Services nurse & Vice Chairperson of ONA/CMH

Executive Committee

SCHEDULES

Changing nurses’ schedules continues to be an issue

at CMH and our nurses need more protections.

We have already shared with members about the

errors made by CMH management in the surgical

block schedule over six months which cost some of our

members one-third of their paychecks.

Just this past week, the roll-out procedure detailed in

our memorandum of understanding (MOU) in surgical

services was not followed. According to the new MOU,

shift lengths were not supposed to change until the

new pay period on Sept. 8, but the schedule was put

out indicating the change would start at the beginning

of the new schedule on Sept. 1. As a result, PACU and

surgery had overtime for hours after the end of the

changed shift length starting Sept. 1. Same day

surgery (SDS) was told their new shift lengths would

be starting Sept. 8 despite the other departments

having already received theirs. During our meeting with

CMH administration this week, management told the

department that they would now grant SDS the

overtime pay as well. However, management only

offered this after nurses were not volunteering to stay

for the longer block days and had to stand up for

themselves. Nurses continue to feel incredibly

frustrated and simply cannot trust that future changes

will be managed properly without protections

guaranteed in our contract.

As more changes are made in the future, we are

concerned about how management’s mistakes will

continue to severely impact our paychecks. We can’t

have management changing part-time employees’

schedules so dramatically due to errors and changes

in the number of core staff without better protections in

our contract. We met for a full day of mediation with

administration to develop the “part-time plus” idea, a

guarantee for nurses to be scheduled at the upper end

of part-time. We felt this was a viable solution and

management indicated they were open to this idea, but

they have since changed their stance.

We cannot have a dock cap without part-time plus. If

one is implemented without the other, our staffing

problems will only get worse. If managers can’t dock

nurses when they hit the cap, managers are more

likely to make major cuts to hours scheduled when

making structural changes to the department or in

times of low census. If we have part-time plus but no

dock cap, managers will guarantee slightly more

scheduled hours for some nurses and then simply

dock them more when making the major structural

changes to the department (because there is no need

due to census).

We are in the middle of a time of change and growth

with multiple departments talking about changing

Oregon Nurses Association | 18765 SW Boones Ferry Road Suite 200 | Tualatin OR 97062 | 1-800-634-3552 within Oregon | www.OregonRN.org

Page 2 Columbia Memorial Hospital (CMH) Newsletter

Status of ONA/CMH Negotiations (continued from page 1)

schedules, patient loads and needs of their units.

Nurses have been harmed too much already to accept

a contract that does not have improved protections

built into it as we move toward even more changes that

management would like to make.

We are still open to discussing other options for what

those protections could look like as we expressed in

our last proposal: “the Association is open to other

ways to protect scheduled hour fluctuations and is

willing to consider other counter proposals that protect

scheduled hours for part-time nurses.” We are not dug

in on any one solution, but we must see management

improve the protections in our contract so nurses don’t

bear the brunt of managers’ mistakes and low census

times.

STAFFING PROTECTIONS

We are open to discussing which parts of safe staffing

should be protected in our contract. CMH nurse

leaders met with Val Hoyle, Oregon Commissioner of

Labor and Industries (BOLI), and are actively speaking

with the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) about how we

can get the staffing law enforced properly.

Commissioner Hoyle finds the hospital’s repeated

disregard for the staffing law very troubling along with

the backlog at OHA. BOLI does not currently enforce

the staffing law but could in future years if things don’t

improve.

Unfortunately, this does not help us right now as

management continues to violate the staffing law. We

would rather handle small issues with Step 1

grievances or a discussion rather than with major

complaints filed with OHA. We understand that

management would like to avoid duplicative processes,

but at the moment, OHA is unable to handle the timely

processing of complaints. Management has told us

they do not intend to violate the law, yet they have

violated it throughout this round of negotiations.

At our last mediation session, we spent the entire

session proving to management that a manager did in

fact issue increased patient loads for night shift in med

surg. We started the mediation session with hospital

administrators accusing us of making things up. We

were told that this is exactly why administration thinks

nurses should not have staffing protections in the

contract.

By the end of the mediation session, management

acknowledged and apologized that they did in fact

issue a new matrix with increased patient loads in that

department without approval from the staffing

committee. We were told that despite this manager’s

mistake, we did not need protections in our contract,

because if we just went to upper management and told

them about what happened, they would fix it. So, we

gave a counter proposal that included a requirement

that we would also make a reasonable attempt to

resolve these issues before filing any grievances.

The next week, while our Vice President of Patient

Services was on vacation, Kendra Gohl, the Director of

Continued on page 3

Oregon Nurses Association | 18765 SW Boones Ferry Road Suite 200 | Tualatin OR 97062 | 1-800-634-3552 within Oregon | www.OregonRN.org

Page 3 Columbia Memorial Hospital (CMH) Newsletter

Nursing, went to our medical surgical unit and asked

them to take more patients than their staffing acuity

allowed. Our nurses pointed out the staffing plan matrix

clearly showed they could not. Gohl then challenged

them to prove that every patient was listed in the correct

part of the grid, which our nurses willingly did. Gohl then

told them that they do not have to follow the acuity tool

all the time and that it’s just a guideline.

This is a violation of the law. Managers may not

coerce nurses into violating their staffing plans. Gohl

then said that she would admit the patients for now,

which fit under the acuity at that moment, even though

there would not be enough nurses on night shift in a few

hours to handle that many patients. Our nurses knew

that night shift only had three nurses coming in, (who

are all newer nurses, some on probation) and that those

nurses would feel pressure to accept these unsafe

patient loads instead of being supported in finding a

safe solution. As a result, two of our nurses stayed 16

hours to support their new colleagues and keep the

patients on their units safe.

Is keeping patients at CMH safer than transporting

them for treatment elsewhere? Not when we do not

have the proper staffing levels to care for them. Was

this just another isolated incident between a nurse and

one manager? No. In addition to pressuring nurses in

med surg, Gohl also contacted Kelsey Betts, co-chair

of the staffing committee to discuss the need to admit

more patients. Gohl again stated that the acuity tool is

a guideline, not a rule with a law requiring it to be

followed. This message from management makes it

very clear that we needed added protections in our

contract.

After having management refuse to add any

protections in our contract and then try to violate the

staffing law, we were worried but hopeful that

management would see that this issue is important to

address. But then to have management walk out of

negotiations and refuse to discuss any further

protections, while the Director of Nursing blatantly tells

our nurses that we don’t need to follow our acuity tool,

makes us worry that this is an intentional attempt to

violate the law not just by individual managers but at

the highest levels of the executive team who run this

hospital.

At worst we will have OHA, BOLI and elected leaders

coming in to take action. What we would like to see

happen right now is for some protections to be added

in our contract to be able to have timely resolution to

individual acts by managers who attempt to break the

staffing law.

After all we have been through and continue to see

every single week, we need a faster way to solve these

problems that is guaranteed, not just a verbal promise

to try harder, or a two-year wait from OHA. Our nurses

need that assurance NOW.

Status of ONA/CMH Negotiations (continued from page 2)

See our nurses’ responses to CMH administration’s recently released document, “FAQs About Negotiations Between CMH and Nurses” on the ONA/CMH bargaining unit webpage:

www.OregonRN.org/55

ANNOUNCMENT: In solidarity with CMH nurses, Oregon AFL-CIO will be bringing their delegates from their annual convention in Seaside, OR to Astoria to join us in our march! See the flyer on page 4 for details.

Oregon Nurses Association | 18765 SW Boones Ferry Road Suite 200 | Tualatin OR 97062 | 1-800-634-3552 within Oregon | www.OregonRN.org

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