AFSCME Labor Management MSH

September 17, 2020  1230PM

Administration Building

Attendance: Adam Castle, Steve Wilking, Alex Flores, Emilio Florez, Annie Jakacki, Scott Melby, Marvin Sullivan, Alli Kuhlman, Carol Olsen, Roxanne Portner, Becky Robinson, Michelle Chalin

Reflection/Celebration: Emilio-Ramps in front of Pederson Building look great. Carol-our physical plant staff does a great job. They turned out nice. Becky-Incident review ask of staff to be more involved has enhanced the content and is really nice to see.

Standing Agenda Items:

1. Osha Information-Handouts
2. 2.      Overtime Information-Handouts

Old Business

Management

 AFSCME

1. 1.      Hazard Pay: Steve-Any update? Alli-Denise is not here. It isn’t decided at local level. Is at MMB and they have had discussion at different levels.
2. 2.      COVID Issues: Steve-any updates? Marvin-
3. 3.      FNH-Straight Lates for some: Steve-Any more info on this? Michelle-Roxanne and I talked about this. That was not for some. There was one person scheduled late at request for the week and on rotation for weekend. After that, it was offered out to staff if they were interested. No one else expressed interest. Steve-just one time offer or pay period by pay period thing due to school? Roxanne-when there is a request, it goes to Jodi and she looks at the schedule. We can’t always accommodate and it distributed equally.
4. 4.      FNH Mid Shifts Given 1 Staff: Michelle-there wasn’t a staff in mid shift. Staff was scheduled their shift and there was an accommodation due to FMLA.
5. 5.      FNH-.5 Only Every Other Weekend: Michelle-I’m not sure what this is about. We have one .2 and two .5 staff. Both are scheduled every weekend (.5).

New Business

Management

1. 1.      Flu Clinic: Roxanne-We will have 5 chances. September 29th, bring insurance card or you can get a voucher. 4 at summit and one in nursing conference room. Encourage members to get vaccinated. Steve-recommend our steward put in the report. Marvin-any places below the hill? Roxanne-2 in Pederson building. Carol-they do not want crossover between msop and fmhp due to covid. MSOP will have their own on September 30th in Pexton. Steve-will those be on different days to minimize confusion? Roxanne-msop has their own dates. I will look and get back to you.
2. 2.      Ironwood and Juniper: Roxanne-we have had dept of health approval for license. Waiting on dhs which should be very soon. Asking Adam Hunt to work with Derek Harpstaed, Elud and Joel to start stocking units and start assigning staff to hopefully go live October 14th. We have a meeting on Tuesday for referrals to that unit. Steve-we have this issue for number 8 as well. Is there a quarantine unit and can we have a list of staff who took those positions? Roxanne-Jodi maintains the list of staff that accepted. Juniper is reserved to not house any patient to see how covid may cause quarantine. We want to hang on to it a little longer. Then we may begin to fill for residential purposes. Steve-forward me the HSSS who took those spots. Alli-yes.

AFSCME

1. 1.      Searches: Marvin-Concerns form staff about how the incident went down. Emails and communication without getting facts. Email from our grove supervisor and specific statements. I escorted him on the unit which staff saw. Staff are feeling targeted. Grove leader called out staff that do Walmart shopping. One staff was asked to do a run a day before the dogs showed up. Hoping we can address these concerns in Bartlett Hall. A lot of lessons may have been learned but we need to put out a message to the staff. I don’t know what but there are a lot of mixed emotions. The email from the supervisor had blatant lies. Carol-how do we change the lesson? I am at a loss. The clinical director apologized. I got information from Ashley Clifton, who wasn’t there but she had information from her staff. We will have the dogs again. We need to get better. Marvin-I respect the dogs coming in. I have nothing to hide. The message came across that we were targeted. Carol-I heard that as well. I am sorry. Marvin-yes, they were round about apologies made. Nothing has come out correcting that I was the one that had them search the office. That is frustrating. That was a personal attack on me. Now people think I was the one who sent them in there. Steve-You were all available in a forum in the nursing home. I suggest making the key players available for staff to talk to so they can have direct questions and answers. I fell that was affective at the nursing home. Marvin-It did affect me personally. Its not just the counselors that feel they were only targeted. Hallway staff agreed as well. Carol-we can take that under consideration. I’m not opposed. Rumor mill is strong on this campus. People have perceptions and we always have to correct. It was interesting when I did rounds. It keeps boiling and boiling. We want to close the chapter. Marvin-The staff that saw what happened, we saw the email come out on the SharePoint kind of creating the rumor. People were asking me why I did this. Carol-I’m not sure how that implies toward you. That’s water under the bridge. It’s the reality right now. Let’s move forward. Thank you for bringing it forward.
2. 2.      Transport Team Med Trips Longer than 4 hours only sending 1 staff. Need for 2 for Breaks: Steve-Concerns about breaks and bathroom usage. Carol-Historically in transition services, this was common for patients who earned privileges. They don’t have to be supervised 100 percent when in the community. We can work on a policy or guideline so everyone understands what the things are we are looking at when determining staffing ratio in community. In writing so everyone is comfortable. It also gives staff ability to stand by the policy. Thank you. Roxanne-I appreciated the communication between staffing responsibilities and coverage policies. There is work to be done. I am still getting used to the processes. Carol-interest based problem solving will no longer be happening in that way. I would like to roll it into our agenda here. We can set aside time to continue work on topics. Just add to this agenda separately. Steve-I think it’s a great thing we had and would like to continue but I am open to suggestions. Transport team rumor is that the transport team may be disbanded due to effectiveness or budget cuts. Carol-we are looking at everything. Rumors that we are getting rid of it has not been true at all. But we are looking at all areas to meet our budget. No decision has been made. Everything is on the table.
3. 3.      Budget Cuts-AFSCME and MAPE but no Management: Steve-44 positions cut. What was breakdown of those? FTEs, .5s. Do we have a breakdown? Carol-It is the positions defined in legislation. Meeting next week with labor partners. In 2017 we got additional positions through 2021. 21 positions in the 2 last years. Across all areas. In 2017, we had a lot of RN vacancies so we didn’t put many MNA positions because we were short anyway. We didn’t want to sit with vacancies and not use the money given. It was across the board. The positions were defined in 2017. Steve-If you have the list, can you send me the breakdown? Carol-I will. It was also shared to Connie Jones, etc. they were sharing it with labor in St. Paul. I will share with all labor groups, Annie-we did get a breakdown. It only breaks down number of FTEs. Not all are full time so if there are different things…Any additional cuts on top of the commissioner’s letter? Carol-to get budget neutral I will need to not fill some positions. I would like to work with leadership across all departments. Where can we see reductions? We won’t be able to do business the same way. I am still going through the work with my leadership group. Annie-will we be notified before its announced? Rumor mill is already going hot. Carol-I will keep the labor groups informed. Steve-If I was inferring that budget cuts happen, does that mean we change minimums or acuity bases? Staff injuries are going up, will we cut minimums? Carol-I don’t know the answer. Safety is critically important. We need to look at all things. Where are there opportunities. Everything will be taken into consideration. I can’t say we won’t but I don’t know the answer to that.
4. 4.      Staff injuries are increasing. Plans to reduce? Carol-We have lots of things we do when there is an injury. We all have to continue to work on it. We have to look at the trend. July was not good. August back down to June numbers. Any and all suggestions are welcome. AFSCME, MNA at the table after incidents. About training, TSS, slowing down, etc. What occurred in July and August, acuity raised, we had admissions, construction. Marvin-We got so many changes so quickly that patients didn’t feel they were getting the attention they needed. New patients were coming in day after day. That created tense situations. Carol-I can’t imagine being a patient during all of this either. Carol-I walked on to a unit yesterday and there was a mop bucket sitting out in the hallway. I brought it up and staff wasn’t happy but it’s something as small as that can possibly be a weapon.
5. 5.      Is there a plan to remove direct care staff input from program hold and on unit status process: Becky-Absolutely not, when you read through the policy, it can be documented by any staff? On unit status, we talked about how to adopt medical lay ins. We wanted to clean up when patients were not allowed to leave the unit. When looking at on unit status, we wanted to improve fidelity. There is a big range for on unit status depending on who puts it in. Why did we feel someone needed to be back on unit? That’s how we ended up with nursing doing documentation. They need to make sure we include the health considerations. Marvin-It is still the team’s decision but at end of day it goes through the RN to make sure it documented the correct way? Becky-yes. Steve-its still happening but its going through the nurse. Roxanne-when incidents are behavioral, I would hear about disconnect between staff. This forces through policy, staff to connect with each other. Alex-what happens if staff disagree with the nurse? Becky-we navigate that with RN charge nurse. Next week I will do a Q and A also.
6. 6.      Transition-Reduction in HSSS Staff-1 on each unit with 1 float for 3 units: Scott-I haven’t heard anything about that. Steve-Ryan sent this to me and I thought it would make sense to you. I don’t know any more. We could table this. Scott-I did some research with AODS and scheduling. We haven’t done any adjustments that resemble that. Steve-Ryan may reach out.

Add On:

1. MOU for overtime signup outside of work area: Roxanne-I still need to reach out to Mel and Denise. Bargaining is coming up soon, I think. Annie-ends July of next year. It will be close to a year before affect. Roxanne-I will follow up and reach out to Denise and Mel again.
2. Shift in progress for LPNs: Steve-generally operate at minimums. Any communication or process to allow LPNs shift in progress? Becky-we will look at where we have extra. Not usually LPNs and we will offer to that classifications. If there is no interest, we can look at others. If we have a grove with no RNs that want it, we may offer to AFSCME. Its hard when people who do similar work are in different unions. Steve-I am willing to work with MNA on that. Annie-if there is a limited number of LPNs and an RN is available, we can talk to MNA to see if they want to work with us.
3. Certain AODS too busy to offer SIP-They don’t even offer to call. Some will call and let you know but one in particular never does. Five AODS can do it but one can’t. Why is this? Scott-I checked in with AODS every week. I am not aware of any saying they are busy. I need that information so I can follow up. *Marvin gave info to Scott and he agreed to look into this. *

Roxanne-we are looking into how staff can monitor this in the future.

Meeting Adjourned at 135pm