UNION --Collective Bargaining Fact Sheet (Exercise- 2) A collective bargaining session is about to begin. You have been elected by your coworkers to represent the Hospital Employees Union, which includes 625 employees at Getwell Hospital, a private, for-profit hospital that is part of the National Medical Corporation (NMC). NMC is a very successful chain of 350 hospitals nationwide. Your union members are certified nursing assistants (C.N.A.s), laboratory technicians (lab techs), radiology technicians (radiology techs), pharmacy technicians (pharmacy techs), food service, and housekeeping workers. Your issues are: l) Health and Safety; 2) Child Care Your goal is to negotiate the best safety policies and child care practices. To step up the pressure, the union members have taken a strike vote and the vast majority voted to approve work actions if the unions demands are not satisfied. Any agreement your bargaining committee makes with Getwell Hospital management is tentative until the union membership votes to ratify it. Here's some background on the issues: 1. Health and Safety: Accidental sharps injuries from syringes (needles), scalpels, test tubes, and blood-drawing devices are a serious hazard for all healthcare workers, from janitors (housekeeping) to direct caregivers, both during and after use. There are more than 25 blood-borne diseases that workers can contract from exposure to sharp objects that contain body fluids or blood, including HIV and hepatitis C. Recently, a housekeeper was stuck while closing the lid of a sharps disposal container that was full, and last year a nurse contracted HIV from a used needle that did not retract properly. To comply with Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) rules on exposure to blood-borne biohazards, the union wants management to: 1. Set up a labour-management Sharps Safety Committee to establish both accident prevention and product selection programs, and the union will choose the labour half of the committee (3 members). 2. Commit BDT 150,000 (per year) to pay for releasing three committee members from their usual jobs so they can attend meetings and conduct a survey of co-workers about the safety of all sharp devices and disposal systems currently being used. 3. Use a neutral arbitrator to decide when the Sharp Safety Committee cannot reach consensus about purchasing the safest passive technology available for all sharp devices. (Passive means that no activation by the caregiver is needed to retract the used needle; instead, the needle retracts automatically after use.) Management is currently using a vendor for sharp devices that are non-passive (activation is needed), and therefore, unreliable and unsafe in the opinion of union members. You believe this entire proposal will significantly reduce the hospitals costs for Workers Compensation Insurance, required by state law for disability payments to workers with on-the-job injuries. 2. Child Care: Many of your union members have young children and feel strongly that the hospital should provide an on-site child care center. The high cost and lack of available high-quality child care make life extremely difficult for workers, and negatively affects their attendance and work performance. You estimate that the cost of an on-site facility to be less than BDT 3,000,000 if the hospital renovates existing vacant space, and if the employees who enroll their children pay a fee to cover the teachers salaries and supplies. This fee-for-service program would be much less expensive than private child care centres because it would not be run for profit.