What are the wages in the new contract:

First year: 3.5% across the board

Second year 3% across the board, 3.5% if the Region makes goal

Third year, 3% across the board, 3.5% if the Region makes goal

What do you mean “makes goal”?  Every fiscal year the Region sets a collection goal, which they’ve been hitting the last few years.  The agreement is starting in 2009 the Region will tell us their fiscal year goal, and if by the following year they hit the goal we’ll get an extra ½% raise increase in July of that year.

Why did we take a percent and not a straight dollar amount?  We wanted the raises to be a percent because it rewards nurses, senior staff, and the pheresis staff as well.  For example, if you make $14 an hour, 3.5% of that is around fifty-cents an hour or about $1020 a year for full-time staff. But if you make $18 an hour your raise is almost sixty-cents an hour or about $1300 a year for full-time staff. Add the $1/hr pheresis premium and that’s almost $1400 a year, a big difference..

If we had taken the thirty-five cents an hour raise the Red Cross wanted us to take than everyone except brand new staff would lose money.

What about MCS?     Right now anywhere from 80 to 100 members are MCS trained; almost half our membership.  For this group we got a $0.25/hour in the base right starting immediately, whether you are doing MCS that day or not.   For most staff that is the equivalent of another 1.5% on their base rate, or over $500 a year.  So for MCS staff your raise in the first year is 5% or possibly a little more.

What about the Customer Service Award.  The Customer Service Award for hitting 110% productive doesn’t change, except that it’s guaranteed through July 2009 and though they can take it away once per fiscal year they can’t take it away anytime they want like before.

But in addition there is a new MCS Service Award for MCS staff who complete four procedures per machine of an additional $10.

Any other “perks”?   Yes.  For the first time ever there is a weekend differential for blood drives scheduled to close 4pm or later of $50 per staff person!  We’ve never had that before.  We also have a $25 increase in yearly parking money, limits on 7 hour blood drives, and no lay-offs of our RNs.  In addition we got rid of insubordination, started a new Staffing Committee, and gave each staff person the power to “pause” a blood drive by calling OLO if you think something is wrong on the drive.

What did we give up? Nothing.  That was our goal through this whole campaign: no takebacks.  So we still keep travel time, we still keep premium pay for holidays, we still keep our CAT time, we still keep our premium pay for major schedule changes…nothing goes away.

What about fixed site mileage?  The Region thinks that since this money is for commuting legally they shouldn’t be getting the mileage reimbursement.  We think they’ve been getting it for years and should keep getting it.  We’ve agreed to meet after the contract to negotiate what should happen next, but no one is losing their mileage until the situation gets resolved.

What about our Health Benefits?  This was a big victory.  They Region will continue to buy everyone the basic benefits plan and pay the same 75/25 split we have in our contract, except if you’re in the single plan they’ll actually pay more: 85/15 split.  If you want to select another plan (like the Premium plan) you can but then you have to pay the difference.

The good news is in our contract there is a limit on how much the premiums can go up depending on whether you’re in single, spouse, children, or family.  We keep those caps!  That was a big victory.  Without those caps the amount could go up 100 or 200%! The other good part is each year the Region has been allowed to “roll over” the caps so if it’s $25 a month in 2005 (for single) then it’s $50 a month in 2006 and if they don’t use that $75 a month in 2007 and so on.  This could mean that in 2009 people could be looking at monthly increases of  $150 a month just for the single plan!  People with family plans would have had to pay three times that!  With our new contract the only caps that can roll over are from this year, 2008.  So there may be an increase in 2009, but it won’t be going back to 2005.

This doesn’t apply to the dental/vision or to the part-time staff.  For these plans it will be the exact same as everyone else in the Region.  If it stays like it’s been there shouldn’t be any big increases but if there are it will affect everyone at the Red Cross.

Why are we meeting about Travel Time?    The Red Cross thinks they have a “revenue neutral” plan to give people a raise instead of paying for travel time.  It didn’t sound good to us so we didn’t agree to it, but we did agree to meet again next and have further discussions.  Obviously we’re not obligated to agree to anything and travel time will stay in the contract for the full three years.  Anything we talk about with management would have to be voted on by the members.

So what’s the bottom line.  
The bottom line is we made all of our goals when we set out in negotiations: more money than last time with no take-backs.  The raises this year will run between 9 ½ - 12% over three years compared to 9 ½ % three years ago, with about half the staff (MCS) getting 5% in the first year alone.  We can also make more money on weekends and don’t give up anything on CAT, travel time, or any of our other premiums.

This is a lot of information so please talk to a member of the negotiating committee if you have further questions or you can call Steve at the Union office at 856-663-0300, ext. 316.

Congratulations to all the members for fighting so hard for such a great contract!