7-17 Central Table Bargaining Update

Last week, state workers took action in dozens of cities around Oregon. SEIU 503 members came together and demanded that management do better at the bargaining table and meet workers needs on a new top step, better COLAs and maintaining discrimination language in the contract. It was clear in bargaining this week that these actions had a HUGE impact as we saw more movement from management than we have seen all year.  Because of this A LOT happened at the bargaining table this week. Here is a breakdown of the biggest priorities:  

At this point in bargaining, it is about what money the Legislature has approved for the next two years. They approved $300 million—the second highest ever—but it still limits what we can achieve. With the changing economy and shifting federal policies, the budget will continue to fluctuate, aligning state and union priorities more closely. For example, the state delayed the top step in the contract to save money, but they knew we wouldn’t settle without it. 

COLAs – Both sides made movement on COLAs, and we are getting closer to an agreement. On Tuesday management proposed a 2.5% increase on 12/1/2025 and 3.45% on 12/1/2026. Again, this was only because of the action workers took on July 10th. On Wednesday, we updated our COLA proposal to a CPI (with a minimum of 2% and a maximum of 3.5%) on 11/1/2025 and CPI+2% (with a minimum of 3% and a maximum of 4.5%) on 11/1/2026. We continue to push management on the concept of attaching COLAs to inflation to better assure workers do not fall behind again in the future.  

Management made MAJOR moves on three proposals:  

• Top Step – Management proposed an eleventh step added on 3/1/2027 that people would get on their benefit eligibility date. We want to be clear, this movement happened because workers fought hard for it. Management has clearly not wanted to add an additional step during this contract, and the souring economic forecast made this fight so much harder. This is a huge win for workers. Yesterday our team countered with an eleventh step added on 11/1/2026 that all topped out people would get on that date. 

• Discrimination – For months management has been trying to remove discrimination protections from the contract. Yesterday, we received a package back from the State that includes many of the proposals that impact equity, and the State made big movement.  They said that they heard us when we said changes to the equity protections in the contract are unacceptable, and in the package, withdrew most of their proposed changes to the articles of the contract that impact equity and discrimination (Articles 22, 22T, 101, 101T).  They are also proposing to move the equity steward language into our Union Rights article where the majority of the steward language exists. We were happy to see this movement, and we know it only happened because WORKERS TOOK ACTION. Management moved because of the stories that you shared. They heard us loud and clear; we MUST have discrimination protections in our contract.  

• Remote Work – We have started to dig into the issues that we hear from workers – mainly that decisions about remote work agreements are not consistent across agencies, much less across the state. In addition, we never win grievances at Step 3, which means we cannot hold agencies accountable for their decisions. Yesterday, we were finally able to make some progress with management (who, thus far, has refused to make any changes to Article 138). In the back and forth we had yesterday, they agreed to take the decision making at Step 3 out of the hands of management alone and put it into the hands of a joint labor management panel. They also agreed to include language that talks about partial rescissions of remote work alongside full recissions. This article has not been TA’d as of now, but this was big progress that we think will have a substantial impact on our ability to hold management accountable on remote work issues. 

We also continued to negotiate over other important concepts where we saw less movement:  

• Health Insurance – They continue to propose using the same language that we currently have in our contract establishing premium shares.  We did have a conversation with them that included a PEBB board member to explain our concerns with the current language.  We hope that we will see movement in a future proposal from them. 

• Inclement Weather – This proposal is packaged with Remote work; we are still having conversations about this article but were able to get the state to agree that workers should be able to find the criteria that are being used to determine closures. 

• Wage Parity and Vacation – We continue to propose that workers should have the same pay as management service employees when they are in the same classification. The state has still not responded to this proposal, which is extremely disappointing. We are also proposing that represented workers should have the same vacation accrual rate as management services. The state continues to refuse to agree to this proposal, but we have not moved off of it. 

Payroll 

The State also passed us a counter on payroll on Tuesday. It was disappointing and completely missed the mark. They continue to connect payroll with economics in their payroll proposals. In short, they are telling us that they refuse to settle without payroll changes. Their most recent proposal included a specific timeline but did not include enough money to ensure that workers will not experience economic insecurity during the transition. They included forty hours of additional vacation leave that could be cashed out immediately to help with the payroll transition, which is not enough to cover the transition period but is better than their initial proposal of a one-time $500 payment.  We had a long sidebar discussion with them about what we need from them to consider making this transition and will see what their response is when we meet again next week. 

State workers also received notice of the Workday transition class action lawsuit settlement. We shared a similar update with all members in March so hopefully this was not new to anyone. This notice is a required step to finalize the $15 million dollar lawsuit settlement around the Workday payroll transition. Please note, this settlement is not finalized as it is contingent on labor organization agreements regarding Workday-related grievances. We must reach a settlement during bargaining for this lawsuit settlement to move forward.