5/20 Bargaining Update

Video Update: https://youtu.be/iIP5M5RCyfM
Website: https://doccouncil.org/

We had another bargaining session with no progress from Allina. At each session since March 11, we have explained to Allina that we need to see progress on our economic proposal including addressing a way to compensate for the work we do outside of direct patient care, paid leave, and much more. Despite Allina telling us all in their last email bargaining update that they don’t intend to pay us less, they continue to propose exactly that - they are still proposing to pay us at the 25th percentile nationally and taking away quality bonus and deferred compensation. We have tried multiple times to adjust our proposal to work together but they refuse to move in any way. Regardless of what Kevin Best or anyone else says in an email - the proposals don’t lie, and Allina’s proposal would cause all of our jobs and our ability to care for patients to deteriorate.

We have continued to try to work on non-economic proposals as well. We gave them an adjusted scheduling proposal earlier in May and they have not responded. We tried working on an on-call proposal today but they refused to alter their proposal which would not give us adequate protection against taking call for specialists.

We also asked them today to work on parts of the economic proposal that Allina has refused to meaningfully address including retirement benefits, health insurance, dental insurance, long and short term disability, leaves, and CME. Their proposal on all of these issues simply states that they can change them all unilaterally at their discretion. We explained to them again that we unionized to bargain over these issues but heard nothing back from them today.

We have tried very hard to work on many proposals but they have essentially dug their heels in. If we want our jobs to get better, to have more resources to care for patients and to make the job appealing for new grads and medical trainees, we need to tell the public and Allina that we want them to come to the table and work together with us to improve Primary Care. Please come show Allina that you care about the contract at a picket on June 3 at 6 am at the following clinics: Maplewood, Bloomington, West St. Paul, and Coon Rapids. The public overwhelmingly supported our decision to unionize and we believe they will continue to support our efforts! Even coming out for 30 minutes would help. You can’t be disciplined or fired for participating and we want to keep our message positive! Let’s make primary care better together.