On February 22 and March 1, our SEIU 503 central table bargaining team met with management to continue making our initial proposals to the state.
In these sessions, we gave management the rest of our proposals for economic justice. With so many state workers continuing to receive incorrect paychecks due to the Workday debacle, our union team proposed that the state be required to issue penalty pay for underpayments, cover actual costs incurred by workers for those underpayments, and create strict timelines for the state to repay wages owed to employees. We also proposed differential increases including improvements to the multilingual differential and a way for workers with bilingual skills to request to receive a differential for those.
We also passed the state proposals for union strength to keep our union strong and able to bargain from a position of power. These proposals would give workers better access to their union representatives, improve new employee orientations, increase paid steward training time, and more.
The state gave us several proposals which mostly dealt with small, housekeeping items. They also passed a proposal to make it easier for management to contract out the work of SEIU members. The state hasn’t yet responded to our economic proposals.
Our power at the bargaining table comes from workers taking action together. Sign the bargaining petition today to show the state that we are united and ready to fight for a great contract!