PORT ANGELES — Negotiators for Olympic Medical Center and Service Employees International Union Healthcare 1199NW who met last week will continue contract talks this week, union representative Chris Barton said.
Barton said the talks are tentatively scheduled to continue Tuesday at a location that has not been determined.
Barton said hospital negotiators who met for nearly seven hours Friday agreed to make the joint statement that the talks would continue.
“We made enough progress to continue to meet,” Barton said.
“I’d say we are both working on things.”
Hospital Assistant Administrator Rhonda Curry could not be reached for comment Friday.
Settlement talks
The two sides unexpectedly began settlement talks Thursday morning at the outset of a state Public Employment Relations hearing that was slated to be held before state Public Employment Relations Commission mediator Claire Nickleberry at the Family Medicine Building, 240 W. Front St., where they met again Friday.
Attorneys had been scheduled to give opening statements to Nickleberry at 9 a.m. Thursday.
Instead, Nickleberry sent both sides — totaling about a dozen people — into private meeting rooms at the Family Medicine Building shortly after 9 a.m. to determine the evidence that would be presented at the hearing, which was scheduled for two days.
She also asked them to try to reach a settlement if at all possible.
The hospital and union are deadlocked over health care benefits and nurses’ staffing levels.
Bad faith?
The union has alleged the hospital negotiated in bad faith when hospital commissioners Feb. 1 unanimously approved a three-year contract without the union’s consent and after the hospital had declared the two sides had reached an impasse.
In November, a Kitsap County Superior Court judge ruled an 18-hour walkout threatened by the union would be illegal.
The SEIU had filed an unfair-labor-practices complaint against the hospital last summer over the stalled contract talks.
It was amended Feb. 22, three weeks after hospital commissioners approved the contract.
Same benefits
The hospital has said the contract gives SEIU workers the same benefits as other union, nonunion and management employees and that most hospitals do not include nurses’ staffing levels in contracts.
“At some point, there will be an agreement,” Barton said.
“That’s the nature of bargaining.
“I don’t know if it’s going to be on Tuesday.
“Obviously, we want to continue to meet.”
Nickelberry was not present for the talks Friday.
The unfair-labor-practices hearing is scheduled to continue May 2-4.
________
Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.