Final offers from both the Oregon Public Employees Union and the Oregon University System are now on the table in their contract renegotiation, but the two sides still seem no closer to reaching an agreement.
“We were hoping they would come through and match the proposal we had on the table,” said Kathie Best, the president of the Service Employees International Union Local 503, Oregon Public Employees Union.
SEIU and OPEU represent the 3,700 classified workers employed by the OUS. Since April, the union has been in negotiations with the OUS to redefine salary, benefits and other selected areas of the current contract the OUS has with classified employees.
Union representatives are asking for a minimum hourly wage of $9.50 for all employees, a salary increase of 3.2 percent each year for the next two years or a monthly increase of $60, whichever is greater. They are also requesting that the OUS cover the rising cost of health insurance premiums since the contract was last negotiated.
The OUS had previously delayed finalizing an offer because management was still determining how much money from the new 2001-2002 budget would be available for salary and benefit increases for classified employees, OUS spokesman Bob Bruce said.
But on Aug. 6, the union declared an impasse, which by law requires both parties to submit a final proposal to the Oregon Employment Relations Board within seven days.
According to a statement released Monday, the OUS has offered classified employees a total increase of $20.4 million in salary and benefits for 2001 through 2003. Under the OUS proposal, union members would receive a 2.2 percent salary increase in each of the next two years. The OUS would also cover all medical costs for workers making less than $30,000 a year. Those making more would receive 75 percent of the increased premium.
With the resources available, OUS representatives “have put together the best possible offer we can,” Bruce said.
Although Best said the OUS proposal is “a step in the right direction,” she maintains that, based on data from two Northwest public policy centers, an hourly wage of $9.50 is the minimum salary needed to cover workers’ cost-of-living expenses.
She added the $30,000 cut-off for receiving full medical insurance coverage penalizes higher-paid workers.
Other union members said they suspect that the OUS has another motive for offering more medical coverage to lower-paid employees. Cherie Smith, president of the University OPEU chapter, said the move is a typical “divide and conquer” strategy. The idea, she said, is to pit lower-paid workers against higher-paid employees so that not all union members will vote in favor of a strike.
While Smith said she is encouraged by some of the economic concessions the OUS has made, she is concerned that with so much of the discussion centered on salary and benefits, union members may let other aspects of the contract proposal slip by unnoticed.
For example, she said, proposed changes by OUS would create more temporary positions and allow more jobs to be “contracted out” to non-union employees, which could result in layoffs of regular classified workers.
OUS representatives would also like to change the seniority system for classified employees, Smith said, which would make it more difficult for workers to use their experience to transfer to another University department if their current position is eliminated.
She also criticized a proposed change in overtime hours that would only allow classified employees to be paid overtime wages if they work more than 40 hours a week. As it is now, workers are paid overtime for all time over eight hours a day, regardless of how many hours they work in a week.
The OUS proposal “sounds good,” Smith said. “But when you start delving deeper … there’s more to it than the economic proposals.”
Bruce, however, dismissed Smith’s argument that the OUS is using a strategy to divide union members. Lower-paid workers are being given more medical coverage because they need it more, he said.
When the OUS contracts outside workers, he added, it is for the sake of being as efficient as possible. And the change in the definition of overtime hours is consistent with how most workplaces pay their employees, he said.
“We think that we’ve put on the table a fair package and a fair offer,” he said. “We would hope that the union would move quickly and favorably toward helping us reach an agreement.”
Representatives from both sides will go back to the bargaining table on Aug. 22 and 27, when they will meet with a state mediator to continue contract renegotiations.