Get Ready for Elections
In accordance with our union’s constitution, all SHARE members will soon be sent a mailing to their home addresses with details about the upcoming Rep and Executive Board nomination and election process. Learn about the role of a SHARE Representative here.
The mailing will be sent today, Friday, so you should receive it early next week. Because the election will be electronic this year, please make sure that your personal contact information is up-to-date. And, if you haven’t yet joined SHARE, do so now! Only SHARE members can vote. It’s easy to sign up here with SHARE’s new virtual membership card.
Through a variety of exercises, conversations, and simulations, the teams explored how the different negotiation styles bring about different results.
Contract Negotiations Have Begun
Yesterday, SHARE sat down with UMass Memorial management in our first official negotiations event. The session was facilitated by Brandeis professor Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, who taught the teams about Interest Based Bargaining (IBB). Interest-based bargaining differs from traditional negotiations in that both sides work to become joint problem solvers, and recognizes that we can work to maximize our shared interests for mutual gain. Read more about our first session and the IBB principles we will be using over the coming weeks as we work toward an agreement about our new contract policies, raises, and benefits.
Kronos Update
According to UMass Memorial, it has completed roughly three quarters of the 25,000 reported Kronos discrepancies, and expects to complete those corrections in July. Payroll will then run a full audit to capture any unreported discrepancies and correct those before turning full attention to correcting the PTO accruals. In the meanwhile, the accruals will continue to be wrong — and you shouldn’t be denied time off as a result of your current balance. SHARE is urging the hospital to provide individualized information to each member about how Kronos impacted their pay and what corrections have been made. And we’re advocating that overpaid members should have the option to re-pay the hospital using Earned Time rather than cash. Read more . . .
Unit Based Teams Peer-Learning Event
Roughly twenty-five SHARE and management UBT Co-Leads met recently to learn about four different UBT projects and what has made them successful. Teams from Hahnemann Family Health Clinic, Inpatient Pharmacy, Rheumatology, and Respiratory presented at the event. Read more about their projects here. Participants at the event developed a list of worthwhile outcomes that resulted from their projects, including:
Increased caregiver happiness,
Increased productivity,
Decreased wait times,
Removal of waste,
Teamwork & team building, and
Standard work, built by the team who does that work themselves
Honoring Juneteenth
SHARE values the importance that June 19th holds in our national history. The day became a national holiday in 2021. Massachusetts followed to make Juneteenth a state holiday. Institutions including UMass Medical School, officially observe it as a paid day off. The holidays recognized by UMass Memorial are a subject of bargaining, and SHARE’s negotiating team plans to advocate for the day to be recognized as a holiday in our contract as well.