We reached a milestone in bargaining last week.  We expect our final contract to have 54 articles, based on what’s currently been proposed by both us and management.  

After reaching tentative agreements last week on Reduction in Force, Committees and Bulletin Boards, we now have reached 29 TA’s with management.  This means we are more than halfway to our first collective bargaining agreement.

This year, there will not be merit raises tied to your evaluations. Instead of getting merit raises determined by supervisors, we will get a union-negotiated raise!

We will be beginning our discussion of raises with management at the bargaining table on July 10th. The bargaining team will say:

Michigan Medicine has declared May to be Grief Awareness Month for Faculty and Staff. We experience grief and loss as employees. Since February, we’ve worked to extend the current Bereavement Leave policy to include the loss of an unborn child in our contract. UMMAP Member, Trisha Pierson, shared her heartbreaking loss of her daughter with the Regents, last Thursday. Below is her statement:

The prioritization of insurance billing as a productivity metric is quickly leading to a crisis of lower quality patient care and burnout amongst healthcare providers. Although metrics like these have been in place for a few years now, in 2023, social workers at the University of Michigan Medical Group (UMMG) were told that the rigidity of these metrics would be increased. 

Our morning began with powerful statements and testimonies from UMMAP members and allies.  We began by sharing basic facts about pregnancy loss and its impact on expecting parents emotionally and physically, followed by deeply moving testimonials from members in support of our bereavement leave proposal. 

CALL TO ACTION: Several members and experts are prepared to testify Wednesday in support of our bereavement proposal, which would provide leave in the case of a pregnancy loss. Management so far has rejected our fair and compassionate proposal, but you can help put pressure on the bosses to agree to our demand.

This week’s negotiations resulted in some considerable movement.  Our Master Agreement Team and Management’s Team came to tentative agreements (TAs) on five proposals on Wednesday.  Three of the five TA’s are major and have a direct impact on our working conditions and rights as union employees.

That was the message Wednesday when the UMMAP bargaining team presented the outline of our salary proposal to University of Michigan leadership at the bargaining table.

Our employer is profitable and has significant reserves, and yet employees have worked under low and stagnant wages. Other unions have secured strong contracts in recent years, and we expect to be treated the same. The time is now for leadership to pay us what we’re worth.

Social workers are increasingly pressured to see as many patients as possible, focusing on providing resources for one identified problem, with no time to assess for other issues. Social workers are in an untenable position of working mainly to meet the institution’s financial goals. This needs to change.

Most people believe putting profits over patients’ care is wrong, but systems such as Michigan Medicine are pushing staff to reach increasingly harsh productivity metrics. 

We may not be aware that someone close to us is living with speech, language and hearing difficulties.  We may form unfavorable impressions of these folks thinking they are troublesome, unintelligent or drunk.  May is National Speech, Language and Hearing Month.  This is an opportunity to raise awareness about these disorders and how they can be addressed. 

Though no proposals were exchanged, last Wednesday, there were healthy conversations that led us to find some common ground.  We began our session by revisiting  management’s counter-proposals from last week for clarity.

While we made some nice strides on May 1st, last week proved to be frustrating at best. The most contentious part of our Negotiations was management’s counter-proposal on Funeral (Bereavement) Leave. This discussion happened mid-way through our session.

Our bargaining team made a significant negotiations move on Wednesday, proposing to package all outstanding non-economic contract items together to greatly speed up the bargaining process and shift negotiations to salary and other economic items.

Michigan Medicine management is yet to respond to the salary proposal we presented in July, but negotiations on non-economic issues progressed on Wednesday with four more tentative agreements reached.