May 2021 FMHP Meeting Minutes

AFSCME Labor Management FMHP

May 20, 2021 1230PM

Administration Building

 

Attendance: Adam Castle, Ryan Cates, Steve Wilking, Marvin Sullivan, Eric Manriquez, Annie Jackacki, Scott Melby, Becky Robinson, Roxanne Portner, Carol Olson, Michelle Chalin, Kristen Hiner, Sharon Huntley, Tracy Johannsen,

Reflection/Celebration: Becky-Supplementals went well. Cates-We came to an agreement this time. Carol-Staff appreciation. Staff on campus do an incredible job. There were a lot of donated prizes. Kitchen staff felt really proud of having people participate. I want to recognize them in a special way. Scott-Very proud of their cookies. Roxanne-Celebrating nurses week a couple of weeks ago. Everyone should have gotten a thank you from their supervisors.

Standing Agenda Items:

  1. Osha Information: Handouts from Alli.
  2. 2.      Overtime Information: Handouts from Alli. Carol- I asked Jodi to get me a comparison from last year. Overtime is high and as you review the graphs, you note the inverses are relatively low.
  3. 3.      Budgeted Position Review: Carol-We have around 60 positions vacant in FSS. Rn and LPN positions. Of that 20 some for forensics support specialist. That is the subset I’m looking for recruitment because that is our 24/7. We aren’t getting candidates. We got 4 yesterday. The time before we had 10 and people didn’t show, etc. and we got no one. I asked Kurt to post posters in businesses. He hasn’t gotten back to me yet on where he put those. He said some businesses will only leave up for a week. We will also have a job fair in Mankato on June 5 at the civic center from 9 am to 1pm. We will have a table there and we will also have a radio advertisement. HR is working on having a virtual job fair the following week. Becky-A nursing rep will be there the entire time with HR as well. If anyone else want to help, they can. There were some video clips recorded and we use those for our ads. We use these at our job fairs. Is anyone interested in helping with that?  At this time, no one volunteered, but certainly get back to Carol. Marvin-A big concern from people is not being able to get time off. No vacation available. We need to look more broadly at how to keep people. This is an important item for people. Carol-when I speak about the schedule, people value weekends off and when they come to a job having to work every weekend…Marvin-I get that it’s a business but maybe we can look at that. Becky-How did we calculate vacation? Carol-Making sure we offer enough to what is earned. The number is arbitrary from what I remember. Ryan-Generally a 10 to 1 ratio.  Tracy-We can share more information when we talk to Sharon.  Carol-If the money gets passed in the special session, we don’t know how that will be appropriated. Bonding did not go anywhere at this time. Annie-we have no additional information on that.

Old Business

Management-None

AFSCME

  1. 1.      COVID Issues: None
  2. 2.      Hazard Pay: Denise is not here today to give any info on that. Annie-any info from the state related to the relief money? Some should be earmarked for staff. Carol-I have not heard anything related to that.
  3. 3.      OT Increase: Cates-85% is sick time. Any way to break down sick time into categories related to FMLA, injuries, covid, etc.? Scott-yes, there is. You can ask everyone, and you can get a different answer. The numbers are there. In general, medical leaves drive a lot of overtime. We can look and get that for you. Roxanne-Covid is very minor now. Annie-Sick call injuries at work, FMLA, etc. is different than call ins. Staff burnout is starting to increase. We need to look at why. If 90 percent are medical leave, its different than 90 percent calling in sick because they are working a lot. Carol-vacation and leave are separate, but we can clarify that. Annie-Preapproved vacation would also be helpful. Scott-when people call in sick, they don’t have to tell us why. If someone is injured, we will have that. Marvin-if you see a drastic change, then we can look at what is going on. Scott-I look at it every day. If I could pinpoint it, I would tell you.
  4. 4.      Hospital Coverage: Steve-Becky spoke of how important it is to do things in pairs. We don’t know that status of patients. Another single staff did hospital coverage recently. We will continue to have these conversations with safety. We need to send multiple staff for safety reasons.
  5. 5.      Grove Reorganization: Becky-No updates on moves. We are prioritizing recruitment for HSSS. I put out a SharePoint announcement about the sequencing for opening units. The intention is for safety. Being mindful of bartlett hall. We are almost good to go on aspen, birch, cedar. Construction and our cleaners ask that we wait until after Memorial Day. Then we will give some tours. We will schedule those after Memorial Day. We will be working on drills, etc. When the temporary walls come down, we will start those. Steve-There are a lot of rumors about construction from linden to Tamarak and willow. We had walkthroughs last time. Becky-Those will be done. Steve-What is the plan if you aren’t getting applicants and we get to where we need these units open? Carol-I am hoping with these efforts we will have more. If we don’t by June 7, we will have to have furth conversation options. The census has dropped to 65 in transition. Becky-One HSSS position has been reserved for being a rover type to help also. Steve-People are curious if they well have to start covering different areas. Some have mentioned FSS’s becoming SCs. HSSS do not want to be FSSS at this point. Carol-There is nothing on the table that says we would switch to HSSS in prairie view and north campus at this time.
  6. 6.      Not Backfilling Units when staff leave or come to work late: Cates-It’s still happening. When a staff has 4 hours at beginning or end of shift, it’s not being covered. Carol-an hour or 5 hours? Cates-yes, and still running it short. Scott-we are intending to cover them. There are times when we call to cover, and staff say “we are good.” Cates-there are times we don’t have enough and the AODs says we can work with it. Marvin-those should have been filled. Scott-we will inverse when we need to. We intend to fill those. Let me know when it doesn’t happen.

New Business

Management-None

AFSCME

  1. 1.      OT Being Given on days when vacation is pre-approved: Cates-Is overtime being granted when people have vacation? When are you granting and when are you not? Cates-contract says you can’t have overtime on a day you have vacation. Scott-People are signing up when they have an hour of vacation. Steve-what is the cutoff? Scott-I don’t know, what is your opinion? I think it’s the entire day. Someone has an entire day; they can’t sign up. If it’s a partial and sign up when we are inversing. I want to have the volunteer as opposed to inversing.  Marvin-if it counts as two, why are we not allowing someone else to pick up the rest of that vacation spot. There are people who want the remaining hours from that shift. Carol-we can go back to Jodi. We have used up all of our money for atlas to work on tweaks to it. I guess it probably counts an entire day. Roxanne-we will take it back to Jodi. Scott-months in advance or last minute? Cates-preapproved. Carol clarified what is being asked for follow-up, just to clarify its-Staff looking at sharing a day off instead of taking the entire day up with only a couple of hours.  The other is how we are looking at overtime when a staff has vacation. Cates-agree, that is what we need clarified. If they can get overtime, then they are also inversible.
  2. 2.      LPN active bids being placed on “hold” because of LPN shortage: Cates-LPNs in grove A are being used as HSSS and scheduled as such. Roxanne-that is more recent because we have resources from grove E, and we have a HSSS need. We are using people that are capable and qualified. We are trying not to do that because we want to use the LPN in a licensing role. We have had 2 or 3 applicants for LPNs in the last 6 months. Schools are putting students on track to go straight to RNs instead of LPNs. It’s not just a challenge here. If you have ideas how we can recruit, let us know. They are valuable assets. Cates-when you can’t recruit them but then shrink down their role, it’s a lose, lose situation. Carol-we added grove E into Grove A. We have a pool of LPNs without having expanded to north campus. Steve-if you have resources and a grove B was put on hold? Is the push to put all LPNs on grove A. Roxanne-no. Just made a change to go to 8 hour shifts in Grove A also to help with satisfaction. No intention to not have LPNs in grove b and c. LPNs pools are so small so it’s better to be in a work area with more LPNs otherwise they are the only one that can be inversed. Marvin-Have you thought of using CMA’s? Carol-we didn’t go the route of posting CMAs because of the complicated medication regimes our patients have and when we created a position description it was classified as an HSSS. Reorganizing that an HSSS wouldn’t want to take on that additional responsibility with no pay benefit, we didn’t go any further with it. Michelle-There also wasn’t any benefit for the TMAs to be included as well.
  3. 3.      LPNs and HSSS cleaning toilets despite a shortage of direct care staff: Steve-We say we are short HSSS and moving LPNs, etc. Then we are making them do this. They don’t have time for these tasks. We have GMWs for this reason. Becky-We did have a response that hasn’t gotten back to you yet. We are going to try to follow up with items that are not their responsibilities. I plan to reach out to Dan Ploog. Cates-patient bathrooms are never direct care staff. Becky-There are some things that are their responsibilities as well. Sometimes when you assume someone else is doing something, it doesn’t get done. Concerns related to 1:1 assignment. There will be follow up.
  4. 4.      LPNs not being offered NOC overtime: Roxanne-For B and C they are not at this time. It doesn’t help us a whole lot right now. But we are evaluating it. Was there consideration bumping LPN to overnights? Roxanne-No. We would have even less then.
  5. 5.      Are other professions still being routinely called for overtime: Cates-Are non FSSS MAPE being given overtime? Carol-Still being called at point of inverse. Scott-They have to sign up. We don’t like inversing people; we would call them. Becky-Jodi sent out the process for that.
  6. 6.      Grove A vacation spots: Cates-Still shared amongst LPN and HSSS and only one weekend. Split them up or give another weekends spot. Roxanne-we have a lot of positions to fill so we will look at that but right now we can’t with all the shortages.

Add Ons:

Cates-We have a negotiations assembly. I will ask for 3 or 4 staff to be relieved at noon. Carol-That should go to HR and they will send over the notification.

 

Meeting Adjourned at 140pm