PSU-SEIU Settles with Portland State

The announcement came out at about 5pm Saturday night. SEIU calls the deal "substantially equivalent to the agreement that DAS workers reached with the Governor six weeks ago." Details, from the SEIU website:

1. We protected fully paid health care premiums for full-time employees and froze premiums for the part-time plan. We are now one of only two states in the country where full time state employees don't pay for part of their health care premiums.
2. Instead of management's plan for a two-year step freeze, we won back steps in the second year of the contract. Members who get steps in July, August, or September 2009 will have those steps rolled back on October 1, 2009, but those steps will be restored on 10/1/10, when the step freeze will end and regular step increments will resume.


3. We forced management to withdraw proposals for unlimited furloughs and an across-the-board pay cut!


4. Furlough days will be scheduled as follows:


   

Monthly pay of $2,450 or below: 8 days


Monthly pay $2,451 to $3,105: 12 days


Monthly pay $3,106 to $5,733: 14 days


Monthly pay $5,734 or higher: 16 days



"These tiers are similar but not identical to those in the DAS contract. We tried hard to get rid of the fourth tier, but in this area, we could not move the management bargainers. However, we note that because the threshold for the top tier is quite high, these tiers actually result in a lower average number of furlough days than the DAS contract requires."

Next up: bargaining between PSU and AAUP on Friday at 2pm.