7/8 Bargaining Update

Video Update: https://youtu.be/HaSmGcjLA2w

It has now been 4 months since Allina has stopped bargaining in any meaningful way. There was no improvement today.

After we made big changes to our economic proposal last session, Allina responded this morning with an insulting proposal consisting of 1 tiny change. After adjusting our economic proposal seven times, Allina continues to come up with excuses about why they are not making any meaningful changes to their proposals. In addition they told us they don’t plan to alter their non-economic proposals. Furthermore, they are still refusing to put basic items into the contract like Jury Duty Leave, which is in many other contracts Allina has with other unions.

We would love to finish the contract but it’s very difficult when Allina has been telling us for the last 4 months that they want to pay us all less, they don’t want to give us any additional time for non-patient care work, they won’t put guaranteed staffing ratios in a contract, they don’t think we deserve truly paid sick time, and more.

We have told Allina many times that we need to see an investment in Primary Care. Over the last several years, Medicare has increased reimbursement to Primary Care (including Urgent Care) and Allina has intentionally shifted that money away - this was a key factor in our initial unionization push. However, today Allina told us their “zone of potential agreement does not include significant increases in cash compensation” for us.

One of Allina’s lawyers told us “it is in everyone’s interest to come to a contract” today but our union is trying to get there and Allina is not.

As always, we will keep working to get to a fair contract for all. We responded to Allina’s concerns in our non-economic proposal and economic proposal today.

Regarding economics, we again made significant changes in our proposal for base pay while keeping to our core principles of a fair guaranteed salary with 4 fewer contact hours for everyone with the ability to still make more money for producing more. Our current proposal no longer bases APP pay on a percentage of doctor pay. We are now proposing roughly the same percentage increases for all providers. We also are proposing a 5% annual bonus for all providers. What we are proposing as a base salary increase is not a big change from what we currently make. You can review here : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xJXRl93i7nc0MSG7aJhWjb6fHSXhbSbLyUhUm4x1tKU/edit?gid=0#gid=0

Both our proposal and Allina’s proposal gets rid of the 5% performance (quality) bonus. We would rather roll this into base pay for everyone. We recognize that the current bonus is not equitable to all providers.

In terms of non-economics, the most important outstanding issues are mostly related to Urgent Care including number of sites worked, number of weekend shifts required, and closing policy. We dropped some less important issues in our proposal and Allina again refused to make any changes in their proposal.

We will keep fighting. We only have two bargaining sessions left in July. We will need to consider a strike if we don’t see progress from Allina.

Please come to our next bargaining session on Tuesday, July 29 at 830am at the Wilder Foundation (451 Lexington Parkway). This will likely be a very interesting and important session. Your support will help!