By Jon Harris
June 30, 2022
Western New York's largest health care system and two major unions have bought themselves another month to iron out a new collective bargaining agreement.
Kaleida Health and the unions on Thursday said they have agreed to a second extension of the existing contract, which was set to expire May 31 before the two sides extended it until June 30. The latest extension runs through the end of July.
Kaleida and the two unions, Communications Workers of America Local 1168 and 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, have been negotiating since early March on a new labor agreement that would cover about 6,300 workers – or about two-thirds of Kaleida's payroll.
"We are making progress in negotiations," Kaleida CEO Bob Nesselbush said in a statement. "But this contract is incredibly complicated and requires an enormous amount of time and effort from both management and union bargaining committees. It is important that we continue to keep pace as staffing and economics will require the majority of the remaining bargaining time over the next month."
Kaleida said that, so far, the two sides have reached tentative agreement on 86 of 108 articles, 55 of 67 memoranda of understanding as well as six (of seven) letters of intent, which represent a majority of all non-economic issues in the contract.
In a joint statement, CWA and 1199SEIU said the extension gives them "more time to present our economic proposals and to continue negotiations on the issues critical to reaching a solid agreement on behalf of our members."
It was always expected that contract talks would go beyond the expiration date. The current agreement, for instance, was reached in early July 2019, more than a month past the previous agreement's expiration date.
To move these negotiations along, the two sides recently started meeting four days a week – up from three days a week – at 1199SEIU's offices on Main Street in Buffalo.
The two sides, for one, have work left to do on staffing negotiations, though the state-mandated clinical staffing committees gave them a solid start on the topic.
The current contract covers registered nurses, nurse practitioners, dietary workers, personal care attendants and many others across several Kaleida facilities, including Buffalo General Medical Center, Oishei Children's Hospital, Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital, HighPointe on Michigan, DeGraff Medical Park and various clinics.