Negotiations Recap for August 10, 2012
This recap details the third session for the renewal of the collective bargaining agreement between the UW and SEIU 925.
UW Presentation
UW Proposals
- Listing of Employees
- UW proposed a counter to SEIU 925’s proposal, amending it to say that phone number and email address would not be among the contact information the UW provides to SEIU 925 on employees it represents.
- UW explained that it is difficult to distinguish which people have elected to not have this information listed, making it impossible to avoid sharing information that employees have requested remain confidential.
SEIU 925 Response
SEIU 925 disagreed, expressing its opinion that this information is a public record.
UW stressed the importance of determining a way to give information to the union that is meaningful, but does not violate privacy.
Tentative Agreements
- SEIU 925 Administrative Proposal
- UW tentatively agreed, with minor edits, to SEIU 925’s proposal to move the Equipment Inventory Office into the Grant and Contract Accounting layoff unit.
SEIU 925 Presentation
SEIU 925 Proposals
- Organizational Training and Development Class
- Create and implement a labor relations class that is available to all UW employees, several times per year, detailing the historic and current roles of unions and management.
- Temporary, Hourly, and Fixed Duration Employees
- Give across-the-board wage increases negotiated for all SEIU 925-represented job classifications to their temporary, hourly, and fixed-duration counterparts.
- Excepted Work Period Positions
- Overtime-exempt employees directed to work more than 10 percent over their full-time equivalent may be approved by their department managers to receive overtime or compensatory time for their extra time worked.
- This proposal would apply to employees represented by the University-wide contracts and the Research Technologist contract.
- Overtime After Shift Language
- Establish a standard seven-day work period for overtime computation for employees working 10 and 12 hour shifts. Any such employee exceeding either their daily shift or 40 hours during the seven day work period would be paid for the excess hours at the rate of one and one-half times their regular wage.
Further Dialogue
Economic Proposals
SEIU 925 requested a response to its wage parity proposals.
UW explained that it cannot respond to any specific proposal that has an economic cost associated with it without a more complete sense of SEIU 925’s overall economic proposal.
UW further explained that the University’s economic outlook will be unclear until the Washington Office of Financial Management (OFM) releases the details of its financial forecast on September 20. UW would like to have a strong understanding of SEIU 925’s financial requests to begin costing them out and formulating creative solutions for when the OFM’s outlook is made more clear.
SEIU 925 raised the idea of bargaining its hospital contracts separately from its campus contracts, because the hospital contracts do not rely on the same level of state funding that the campus contracts do.
Next Steps
The next UW/SEIU 925 bargaining session is scheduled for August 15.