Bargaining News - 2.5.26

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RWU’s bargaining team would like to follow up on our announcement yesterday that we submitted our strike notice to management with some additional details on management’s current offer, and how it compares with what has previously been proposed. We did not take this decision lightly, and want to be as transparent with our membership as possible as this process moves forward.

The differences between the proposals provided by OHSU management last Friday and yesterday morning did not deliver the “significant movement” we were told would be coming. The offer we received yesterday does include larger increases to wage minimums for our lowest paid members and we thank the President and the Board for hearing those concerns and taking action to address the unlivable wages of the lowest paid 10% of our members. However, those changes represent no movement on wages for the bulk of our membership (Figure 1), including researchers like Julien Carson-Wallace, a Research Assistant 2, who gave powerful testimony at the Board of Directors meeting last week about the difficulty living in Portland on a salary of $46K (Figure 2).

Here are the data on the proposed wage increases we’ve received for Year 1 of the contract:

Fri, 1/30: 4%, $1.25/hour, or minimum wage of $21.85; whichever is greater

Wed, 2/4: 4%, $1.25/hour, or minimum wage of $23.18; whichever is greater

• The difference between the offer OHSU submitted last week and the one we received yesterday would affect only 10% of researchers in year 1. In years 2 and 3, there is no difference in the median increase between their two offers and both are significantly less than RWU’s.
• Neither offer made any movement on management’s proposed across-the-board wage increases of 4% in year 1, 3.25% in year 2, and 3% in year 3 of the contract.
• Although OHSU’s most recent offer would lift minimum wages in the first year of the contract, it fails to address persistent low-pay among our entire membership (Figure 2). This would have the effect of creating substantial wage compression toward the low end of the pay scale.

The bargaining team remains committed to fighting for a living wage for all our members, but will not settle this contract by locking in wage stagnation for most researchers over the next three years.

We also want to respond to concerns about the proposed strike beginning on February 18th, and how this timeline may affect researchers’ healthcare benefits. After much deliberation, we made the decision to deliver the strike notice to management yesterday, as delaying further could give OHSU’s leadership additional time to make strike preparations, and delay our fight for a fair contract. We hope this additional pressure will result in real movement from management in the coming weeks. We plan to discuss this more at our town halls next week (details below). Please come to one of them to get your questions answered!

Strike Town Halls:

• Virtual option - Wednesday, February 11th from 12pm-1pm (Meeting link here)
• In-person option - Thursday, February 12th from 5pm-6:30pm at the Old Library Auditorium (RSVP link here)

Finally, we’d like to acknowledge President Elnahal’s recent announcement to potentially negotiate the closure of the ONPRC. RWU remains committed to protecting the jobs of all researchers at OHSU, and the important life-saving work that is taking place there in the face of this announcement. We will have more on this tomorrow...

In solidarity,
 

Your RWU bargaining team:

Lynne Swarbrick

Wes Horton

Lillian Raley

Victoria Halls

Caitlin Burbank

Anna Levy

Cort Cox

Henry Harrison