Today was our fifth negotiation meeting with management of SMDC. Our current contract expires at midnight. Management continued with their theme of NO!
Three main things happened today:
1.No progress, measured by…
2.No responses to our staffing proposal
3.No economic proposal. (Note: The MNA economic proposal includes fair wage increases, fair pension contributions and health insurance.)
“I am sad and depressed that such a beautiful Duluth day was wasted in negotiations as no forward progress was made today. Management has been absolutely non-responsive and it appears they are stalling to see what happens in the Metro Area. At out last meeting we informed Management that today we would have the Economic Proposal as our primary topic. Feeling confident that this would be tackled today, the Negotiation team shared this news with our Member Body. Sadly, SMDC’s Jerry Zanko responded, ‘We have not got a final economics for today.’ Actually, Our Employer had no (zero) proposals prepared for today. This is worrisome as today is the day our contract expires. We now have only 3 more bargaining days left. Jerry assured us they will have an economic proposal next session (Tuesday July 20th). But later he ended the day saying, ‘Don’t be surprised if we aren’t able to talk about the exchanged language, people are going to be gone.’ (Referring to our upcoming session Tuesday July 20th.) Management will be taking time off in July instead of bargaining with us! The only economic language put across so far by Management has been to increase our number of Mandatory Days Off from two to four. We, as the bargaining team, find this frustrating and disappointing. MNA has been doing all the work while Management asks for the results of our labor. At our first negotiation session May 6th we put across our request for information, as of today we have not received all of this information. This is concerning as there are only three negotiation sessions left before our goal date for completing contract negotiations.” – Kelly Hoenig, RN, Surgery, SMDC
Stay tuned for our next steps. We need to show them how serious we are!