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SB 458

Thank you to our negotiations team of Dan Schindler, Andrea Grote and Muffy Henjy for all their hard work to strive for a contract settlement. 

“In these negotiations, we find that we are once again fighting to ensure that Fletcher Allen respects the importance of our work, improves staffing, and continues working with us to ensure our ability to follow best practices and provide safe patient care. We Put Patients First every day, and we ask the same of Fletcher Allen.”

As you probably already know, our negotiating team is taking on a new approach to bargaining this time around - it’s referred to as "interest-based bargaining.”


Historically, we have engaged in conventional collective bargaining where we would focus on particular sections of the contract we believed needed to be improved or updated. Then we would present proposals and counterproposals and argue our positions until we reached a settlement that we could recommend to you for ratification.


Our new approach involves going through every article of the contract, line by line. Both parties engage in discussions rather than arguments as they express their views. As a result, some articles are signed off unchanged while others undergo minor or major changes. We are also attempting to correct typos and grammatical errors throughout the process.


So far, we have been meeting on a fairly regular schedule – every other week. The team also meets in between sessions to prepare for upcoming sessions. While we cannot disclose details due to the confidential nature of collective bargaining, we can say that we are moving at a respectable pace and hope to begin bargaining the economic portion of the contract fairly soon.


As always, we thank you for your support and patience and can assure you we are doing everything possible to bring you a fair and equitable contract as soon as possible.

US News and World Report came out with their annual ranking high schools in the nation this week. Schools are ranked on the basis of College Readiness, Teacher/Student ratio, and math and reading proficiency. Schools are ranked as Gold (7 in MN), Silver (42 in MN), Bronze (93 in MN), or none. In all, 423 secondary schools in the state were evaluated.

Additional Resources

As discussed at our most recent membership meeting, our negotiating team is taking a new approach to bargaining this time around - it’s called interest-based bargaining”.


Although we engaged in conventional collective bargaining for our first contract, we can see the benefits of interest-based bargaining. Instead of presenting proposals and counterproposals and arguing our positions until we reached a settlement that we could recommend to you for ratification, we are going through the contract article by article attempting to improve upon the existing language.


As a result, some articles are signed off unchanged while others undergo minor or major changes. We are also attempting to correct typos and grammatical errors throughout the process.


So far, we have been meeting on a fairly regular schedule – every other week. The team also meets in between sessions to prepare for upcoming sessions. As you already know, we cannot disclose details due to the confidential nature of collective bargaining, but we can say that we are moving at a decent pace and hope to begin bargaining the economic portion of the contract fairly soon.


As always, we thank you for your support and patience and can assure you we are doing everything possible to bring you a fair and equitable contract as soon as possible.

Please click on the Title above to download the 2012 Political Landscape PowerPoint presentation.

On April 18th, 2012, UNTF Members voted in favor of electing a slate of new Executive Board Members presented at the General Membership Meeting. Voting was then extended via internet to full members who were unable to attend the meeting. The results are in and the slate has been approved.