Bargaining update 4/12: holidays, bereavement, parental leave

Yesterday was our longest and toughest day of bargaining so far. We made some big asks and got some pretty immediate pushback from management. 

Our newest proposals basically account for everything economic other than wages, which we plan to propose at our next session on April 26.These proposals include additional holidays, extended and more flexible bereavement leave and increased vacation time.

Perhaps the most pushback came in our request for the company to expand parental and medical leave. We’re asking that the company offer a extended leave policy — actually covering our time instead of forcing us to use our accrued illness bank. We’ve also asked for more time in both categories, up to a year total instead of six months, as well as guaranteed coverage of sick leave benefits during this time off. 

Today, employees must use the Washington state’s family and medical leave program and then use their own sick time to "top off" their pay or extend their leave beyond the state's 12 weeks. This means employees may drain their sick time in order to take a meaningful amount of leave. And if an employee or their child got very sick after taking parental leave, they might not have enough sick time available to use.

While our bargaining committee explained how prohibitive and unreliable this system is, the response from company representatives was pretty flippant. They effectively argued that more time for leave would be “nice” but that the ask was too expensive for the company to support. 

We made some progress on our previous non-economic proposals like bylines, but we got challenging counters on other proposals like our drone policy. The company also rejected several of our past proposals including reducing the six- month probationary period. 

We will work on our counters to these responses over the next few weeks, and will be working on ways to mobilize around the issues where we’re not going to budge. 

It was a tough week, but we’re just getting started. We’re ready for a fight. 

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