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From: Ben Drew On Behalf Of Internal Communications
Sent: Friday, May 29, 2015 9:42 AM
Subject: Local 39 Strike Update (Sent on behalf of Jane Willemsen, Michelle Lopes, Ray Nassief and Lisa
Foust)
To: John Muir Medical Center, Walnut Creek Physicians, Staff and Volunteers, Our focus continues to be on delivering exceptional patient care and ensuring safe access to the medical center for our patients, physicians, staff and volunteers. Thank you for providing such outstanding care and service to our patients and the community. Please know that members of the JMH Leadership Team will continue to have a presence on campus seven days a week and can be reached 24/7 to manage and address any issues or concerns from patients, the community, physicians, staff or volunteers. Negotiations Resume A bargaining session with Local 39 has been scheduled for Tuesday, June 2. While we doubt there will be agreement on the pension issue at this session, the main item of disagreement, we are hopeful to reach agreement on other contract issues, which will be a stepping stone to an overall agreement. 
The union has focused on fairness in asking for the same pay and benefits as the engineers they represent at the Concord medical center. Our goal is to treat all employees fairly and consistently, including in the areas of pay and benefits. While the union is within its rights to ask for our engineers to be placed in the Local 39 pension plan, all elements of wages, working conditions and benefits, including pension benefits, are subject to negotiation. 
When JMH acquired the former Mount Diablo Medical Center, a condition of the sale was accepting all the union contracts with their benefit plans, including the Local 39 pension plan. Our growing concerns about the financial health of the Local 39 plan are the reason we signaled to Local 39 at the end of bargaining last December that, when we renegotiate that contract two and a half years from now, we plan to seek withdrawal from the pension plan. 
JMH views fairness as considering the interests of all of the nearly 6,000 employees of the health system, not just those of our Walnut Creek medical center engineers. That's why JMH regularly reviews Bay Area market salary data and uses that data for compensation planning to ensure that our employees are paid competitively compared to the local market. Our responsibility to you and to the community is to make considered and responsible decisions so that JMH continues to be a great place to work, with competitive pay and benefits, and an affordable health system for our patients to receive their care. 
We have a lot of difficulty with a concept of providing one level of pension benefit for 95% of employees and a significantly different and, what the union agrees, is a much more expensive pension benefit for a small group of employees. It stands to reason that providing that same expensive level of benefits to all employees throughout the health system would result in an enormous additional annual cost. 
We believe all JMH employees, including our engineers, deserve a retirement plan that is more likely to deliver on its promises. When you eventually retire under the JMH plan, we are confident that your retirement benefit will be as promised. We say that because our plan is conservatively managed and provides a benefit level that is sustainable. For three months in 2013, our Concord engineers in the Local 39 pension plan did not receive any contributions into their pensions even though JMH continued to make its regular employer contributions to the plan. This withholding of a pension contribution to individual employee accounts is an example of the measures that many troubled multi‐employer pension plans have had to take to address serious underfunding problems. While our goal remains to negotiate a contract agreement, we clearly have differing positions on the pension issue. Unfortunately, before we had finished bargaining, our engineers chose to walk off their jobs, and we acknowledge their right to do so. We hope that they will soon return to work, but, in the meantime, we will continue to maintain our normal operations and care for our patients. Thank you all for coming together and continuing to put the needs of our patients first. If you have any strike‐related questions or concerns, please communicate with your manager or supervisor. You can also contact any member of the JMH Leadership Team, the Strike Command Center or Security. We are always available to answer questions, share information and discuss issues.