After a year and a half of negotiations, two strikes and a federal labor board complaint against the company, the first contract for Howard Brown Health union employees is going up to a vote April 29, according to union representatives.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times file
After a year and a half of negotiations, two strikes and a federal labor board complaint against the company, the first contract for Howard Brown Health union employees is going up to a vote April 29, according to union representatives.
Voting on the tentative three-year contract will end May 1, according to a Howard Brown Health Workers United news release. The contract would include an average of 7% raises across the union body — including annual wage increases — a new minimum wage of $19.23, insurance for part-time employees, two weeks of paid leave for gender-affirming care, a union rights clause and protections against layoffs, among other things.
Christi Kargl, a certified diabetes care and education specialist on the union’s contract action team, said the tentative agreement came at just the right time.
“Prior to this tentative agreement, a lot of people were getting burnt out and some people were losing hope we were going to get a good amount of the things we wanted in this contract,” Kargl said. “[Now] the people I’ve spoken to are pretty excited.”
The contract also requires management to negotiate before changing job descriptions, which she said would help with burnout and staff turnover, and in turn, improve the care patients receive.
“This is going to make Howard Brown a better place to work,” Kargl said.
Katie Metos, vice president of external relations for Howard Brown Health, said after several small victories on the road to a preliminary contract draft, the portions of the contract regarding the “lowest paid workers” were turning points in negotiations.
“We tried to listen better,” Metos said. “That was really the piece our partners wanted us to be most conscious about. … That was our biggest shift.”
Kargl said she and other union members had gone around their neighborhoods and posted fliers informing people of what was going on, which helped put the pressure on the organization to come to the table with better offers.
“I do feel like those public pressure campaigns have been helpful in getting us to this point,” Kargl said. “Management at Howard Brown has felt the pressure a little more.”
Metos said part of the push was in the public nature of the contract struggles and the organization’s purported financial woes.
“We’ve heard from folks in the community that Howard Brown services are lifesaving and life-changing,” Metos said. “They need us to work together to better serve our community.”
The tentative deal comes after union workers staged two strikes following layoffs in December 2022. A two-day strike followed the contract proposal, including layoffs, a month earlier.
Howard Brown Health has stated the layoffs, which eliminated 61 union positions and four non-union positions, were needed to fill an estimated $12 million budget gap attributed to changes in pharmaceutical legislation and the end of some COVID-19 assistance programs. A three-day strike ensued, bringing about 440 employees citywide to the picket line.
The cuts included all drug abuse case managers at South Side locations, members of the gender-affirming care team for youth and 14 of the 15 members of the In Power team, which was dedicated to helping survivors of sexual assault and harassment navigate the health care and legal systems before being disbanded amid the layoffs.
During the layoff proposals, union leaders said they’d seen no evidence of the financial issues and had also found listings for jobs included in the layoffs on sites like LinkedIn, which Sun-Times reporters were later able to confirm.
The former CEO and president of Howard Brown Health, David Munar, stepped down at the end of February, with the vacancy being filled by Robin Gay, the organization’s previous chief dental officer.
Last month, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Howard Brown Health, saying it “found merit” in claims of bad faith bargaining from the organization. The organization earlier reinstated 24 of the laid-off employees, and more than 30 others received back pay for the time they spent unemployed, though have since challenged the settlement agreement.
Metos said a hearing date with the NLRB is set for October, but that she was confident the settlement would be completed before then, and much of the time between now and then is going to be spent reviewing employee claims for costs while they were unemployed.
She said her and the other management staff were “thrilled” the saga was coming to a resolution.
“It feels really, really positive to me and the leadership team that we are at this point and can move toward that first-time contract and move forward with serving our patients,” Metos said.