Members of the Oregon Health & Science University and Oregon Nurses Association bargaining teams on Wednesday, April 19, met for in-person negotiations at ONA, provided their remaining opening proposals, and discussed the Extended CNI MOU. 

The session was the agreed-upon deadline to provide all opening proposals, so the parties now have the full scope of issues that they want to negotiate during this bargaining cycle. This is an important milestone and the OHSU team looks forward to reaching more tentative agreements soon. 

Proposals

The ONA bargaining team brought forward four new proposals:

• New Article 30 regarding remote work, which includes equipment, dealing with interruptions of work due to technical issues, security and drug testing. 
• New Article 29, combining and revising existing and former MOUs on such items as modified operations, inclement weather, communicable diseases, emergency preparedness, as well as new language around contingency staffing.  
• MOU 8, renewing the Employee Healthcare Access Committee to review health care access issues and make recommendations to resolve those issues.    
• Oncology Float Pool MOU, establishing a new float pool to support several oncology clinics and the terms and conditions associated with working in that float pool. 

OHSU provided several proposals and counterproposals for ONA’s consideration, including: 

• Article 7.16 – Specialty Float Pool Structure, clarifying that OHSU can create new specialty float pools without using the restructure process. 
• Article 17 – Retirement, seeking to eliminate the existing automatic employee retirement contribution election amounts.  
• Article 26 – Health and Safety, adding the Workplace Violence Committee to the contract and seats for ONA nurses on this house-wide committee, addressing security in the ED and throughout the broader campus, expanding communicable disease screening and adding the suicide prevention program to the contract.  
• Appendix E – Community Hematology-Oncology, aligning notice of shift cancellation with notice of shift reassignment. 

In addition to the exchanged proposals, the parties had a robust and productive discussion about the Extended CNI MOU, which is due to expire Sunday, April 23, unless the parties agree to extend it. OHSU committed to provide a counterproposal on Thursday, in light of the additional and clarified information provided in the discussion. 

Tentative Agreement 

The parties did not reach tentative agreements this session. 

Going forward 

Apart from the week of May 17, the parties are meeting weekly for the next eight weeks. Negotiations will resume April 26, in-person at OHSU, when the parties will continue exchanging counterproposals.