BU 17 – Health Facilities Evaluator Nurses
Weekly Update: Friday, August 28, 2020

On August 25, 2020, our Union was notified by members that an email from Heidi Steinecker was sent to staff directing HFENs to sign a new duty statement.  Our Union immediately contacted CDPH Labor Relations informing them that we are still in the meet and confer process and our Union had not agreed to any duty statement. We also demanded that the duty statement be withdrawn immediately.

Management responded with an email stating, “The duty statement is not a negotiable item and under the authority of the department to revise and reissue in alignment with the class specification.” In June, CDPH sent a notice to our Union that it was revising the duty statement for HFENs. Our first meeting took place on July 9th, and we had a follow-up meeting on August 4th. We have another follow-up meeting scheduled for September 1st. To date, no agreement has been reached.

Our Union has and will continue to bargain in good faith. However, in light of management’s most recent response, we filed an Unfair Practice Charge (UPC) because management was not fulfilling its obligation to continue to bargain in good faith. You may read the content of the Unfair Practice Charge here.

We will move forward with the meeting on September 1st. There are still some outstanding questions management needs to answer from the previous meeting on August 4th. This includes questions regarding the 3rd revised duty statement.

There is also another outstanding notice we need to address during our next meeting. On July 30th, our Union received a notice that CDPH is implementing a departmental-wide COVID testing policy. We were able to ask some questions regarding this notice during our meeting on August 4th. However, management owes us a response on the questions we raised. Please continue to send us your concerns, issues, and questions regarding this notice.

As always, if you have concerns or questions, please send us an email at unit17@seiu1000.org

Kim Cowart, SEIU Local 1000 BU 17 Chair
Felicia Barbato, HFEN
Nicola Callahan, HFEN
Andres Villatoro, HFEN
Mo Kashmiri, SEIU Local 1000 Staff