Hospital Authority Members Approve New Agreement

On August 7, union members from General, Bordeaux, and Knowles Home voted to accept a new Memorandum of Understanding (“M.O.U.”) that would improve employee rights and working conditions across the Metro Hospital Authority.

The Bargaining Committee, which was made up of your co-workers Chynette Gilkey, Rayetta Mitchell, Vanessa Robertson, Dianne Saunders, and Rosa Lee, has been meeting for close to three months to make sure that key issues were addressed in the three-year agreement.

“The main thing that we accomplished in this agreement is to get Management working more closely with us to solve problems and to make sure that they take our issues more seriously than they have in the past,” says Rayetta Mitchell of BLTC.

SEIU organizer Trista Boseman emphasized that this MOU is just the first step to making some big changes for MHA workers. “There are still more improvements in pay and benefits that we want to see, but funding those things still remains a big problem—not just in the Hospital Authority, but all across Metro. Great pay raises and better benefits are going to have to be a fight for another day and we’re only going to be able to do it if the members come together and help make it happen”.