We are united and taking action to protect our retirement at Valley Medical Center

A majority of us, the members of SEIU Healthcare 1199NW, signed onto unity posters to tell administration:

• We know our retirement security is not putting the hospital in a position of financial hardship
• Dedicated care providers are working harder than ever and getting more done with less every day
• Terminating the retirement plan is a violation of our contracts and the wrong way to treat valuable employees
• We expect administration to do the right thing and maintain our retirement benefits at their current level, as they have agreed to do in our contracts

We stand together behind these principles, and this is the message we sent administration on Friday. A delegation of 20 workers went to the administrative office of Karyn Beckley, Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Marketing, and delivered our 20 unity posters.

“I’m near retirement so administration’s cuts hit close to home. My younger co-workers have even more at stake in the changes Valley is making—they have their careers ahead of them and this cut will hurt them the most. We did a great job coming together as a team and presenting our majority support to administration. Now we need to build momentum as a team to stand up for our retirement security.”
Judy Oellrich, HUC, Infusion Center

“The care team at Valley works so hard and we are being asked to work harder with fewer resources. Friday we delivered our unity posters with a majority of signatures to administration, to fight to protect the retirement benefits that we deserve. We are continuing to build on this important step to show our unity and protect our retirement.”
Charlene Espinosa, RN, 3E

We used membership meetings to gather signatures on our poster and took posters onto the unit to bring our co-workers into the discussion about what is at stake. This is the first step in making sure administration knows we are going to stand up for standards that keep quality staff providing great care here at Valley.

Administration’s termination of the pension plan is a clear violation of the contract. We are pursuing an expedited arbitration process to restore any contributions that are lost as a result of what we believe are administration’s illicit actions. We must stay united to support this process and show administration that we are willing to take steps to protect our retirement security, even after they terminate the plan.