To our members,

As many, or most, of you have heard, Central Washington Hospital is facing financial hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the safety measures that have been put in place to curb transmission of the virus. As a method of conserving financial resources, the “Shared Work Program” was presented as an alternative to true layoffs. The hospital is applying to participate in this program, which allows employees to reduce their hours by 10-50%, while retaining full benefits, accrual of PTO, EIB, and seniority. The “Shared Work Program” will subsidize your loss of income from the reduction in hours from the hospital.

Your union representatives first learned of the hospitals intent to apply to participate this program on Friday, April 17, via email. We discussed the program during a conference call with hospital leadership on April 20th. There was no communication to the union representatives on the timeline in which the hospital would be making efforts to implement this program, nor the number of nurses, nor the units that would be affected. We have been fielding numerous phone calls and emails from many of you who have been approached by your managers about participating in the program, and many of you who have been chosen to participate in the program.

We have formulated a plan with which to approach hospital leadership, to ensure that proper procedure is being followed in deciding who will have their hours reduced. This is an issue of mandatory bargaining, and we will be working to ensure that your interests are served, and rights respected. We are requesting that management meet with us on Thursday, April 23rd.

We will send out communications to keep you, our members, informed of developments in the implementation of this program. Please reach out to any of your union officers, local unit representatives, or Carmen Garrison, with questions or concerns on this, or any other issue. The more information we have, the better we can serve you!

If you do not know you your union officers are, please follow the link below to find their contact information. A list of local unit representatives can be found in your unit’s break room information board. If you are interested in becoming a local unit representative, please reach out to your officers.

WSNA Officers for Central Washington Hospital

In Solidarity,

Nick Jackson

WSNA Co-Chair