Negotiations update Dec 14, 2022

Negotiations Update Dec 14, 2022

The Parties reconvened this week to continue to negotiate proposals. We have mutually agreed to bring in mediator Vince Ready to help facilitate this process in an attempt to come to a tentative agreement.

Vince Ready is a highly respected veteran mediator familiar with HEABC and APBC. He has arbitrated several disputes between the Parties for over 25 years including recent involvement with the SOC dispute resolution process and the 2019 Negotiations Mediation and Contract Implementation.

Throughout the week, we’ve been able to make progress on several agreements in principle on issues where we were close and have been working to focus our efforts on the remaining outstanding substantive issues. However, we want to be clear the Parties have made very little progress on monetary issues.

We would like to highlight what it means to say “paring down” our package. When the Committee began putting together our package for this round of negotiations, we started with 160 proposals that had been agreed to on the Convention floor. These were then combined by categorizing them and then prioritizing them based on the survey results from the membership. When we started meeting with the Employer, we had almost 60 proposals. Many of these were housekeeping matters, minor changes to language but not the intent, and non-monetary concerns. Our top priorities continue to be wages, benefits, and improved working conditions. That has not changed, nor will it.

Mr. Ready will join the Parties on Thursday and Friday this week. We anticipate this will greatly improve the timeliness of the turnaround in proposals and in bringing the Parties closer together on our matters. We will continue to keep you informed as to our progression.

In solidarity,

Your Negotiations Committee

/km/MoveUp