When your UAPD Negotiating team met with administrators last Friday, we believed we were close to reaching a a deal. After all, your colleagues at the table had made significant concessions regarding market adjustments for ALL specialties by agreeing to focus on several specialties in which the County has had extreme difficulty recruiting and retaining physicians. For the other half of the bargaining unit, the Committee reasonably proposed improvements to incentive formulas, which would be mutually beneficial to the doctors and to the County. Considering the County has advocated incentive based pay practices, we did not foresee any roadblocks to these proposals. WE WERE WRONG!
In the past, most incentive pay formulas have been decided by each department. However, your committee proposed to include those formulaic changes in the contract to insure their implementation. This proposal was not well received by management. They wanted us to agree to a “future promise” of incentive changes — with no market adjustment for most of our members, on the eve of the County’s paid negotiator’s vacation this week. The Union could not, in good faith, agree to a “handshake” agreement with no enforceable rights, or allow the County to leverage their vacation delay to dismiss the market demands of half of our members.
These pressure tactics did not work – your UAPD Committee stuck together for the good of ALL of its members. We delayed negotiations until their negotiator returns and demanded that they present our package proposal to the Board of Supervisors.
So far, we have agreed to the following:
- Board certification pay for all doctors who are board certified
- 401(a) plan for PEPRA (Tier II) retirement employees hired on or after January 1, 2013
- $5000 Employer contribution to the 401(a) plan of eligible members
- $2000 Tuition Reimbursement
- No deduction of Holiday from PTO for physicians on call the week following the holiday
- PTO – increase rate of accumulation and increased carryover to 20 days
- Cost of Living Increase in each year of the contract
- 3 year term of contract
- Because wages are still outstanding, we will not publish those increases until we get a complete agreement.
- Please note that these benefits will not be implemented until we reach a complete agreement, and all terms of the contract are ratified by the UAPD members and adopted by the BOS.