On October 18th and 19th in New York City, your national bargaining committee met with Motivate in person for the first time. In 16 hours of meetings, Motivate presented counters to all non-economic demands your committee has made since the summer. "Tentative Agreement" (TA) has been reached on a handful of non-economic issues with several more on the way. A comprehensive list of new non-economic TAs will be made available in the coming weeks.

During this bargaining session, Motivate also offered a very low wage counteroffer to our comprehensive economic package based on your feedback. Needless to say, this first counter is not acceptable to your committee or any member of this union. Economic negotiations will begin in earnest in mid-November; more details will be provided at that time.

As this process unfolds, a reminder that it is very important to rely on good sources of information, and not rumors or hearsay from random people. Good sources of information include bargaining committee members (listed below), Contract Action Team members (if available), and emails or flyers like this. 

Look out for another update the week of 11/6 following a virtual bargaining session with Motivate!

Your employee-led national bargaining committee has been hard at work since our last update in July. All non-economic proposals, representing dozens of changes and additions to the current contract, have been shared with Motivate. These proposals cover everything from Probationary Period to Scheduling to Health & Safety - everything is on the table for improvements.

Currently your team is reviewing results from the economic survey that over 600 of you filled out - thanks for your participation! The next step is to put together an economic package that covers everything from wages, STO, PTO and more, and send it to the company. Your committee aims to do this in the first week of October. Please note, as of 9/18/23, no non-economic or economic proposal has yet been negotiated or agreed to by either the company or your union. Negotiations will begin in-person starting in New York City in October.

Bargaining our new union contract continues to be an open process that relies on your participation to win the strongest deal possible. For more information about the process, what has been proposed or how to get more involved, please reach out to a shop steward, Contract Action Team member, or bargaining committee member (listed below) in your city. More information will be provided in this space very soon.

Since the call was put out to recruit bargaining committee members last March, over 20 of you have stepped up to bargain our next union contract with Motivate. For the first time, your bargaining committee is 100% made up of Motivate employees who know what it's like working for this company. The committee has been meeting regularly for the past four months, well before our union contract expires on March 31st, 2024.

On June 22nd, your committee met to bargain with Motivate for the first time, and continues to do so on a weekly basis. The first topics of discussion are lower-priority non-economic issues. Priority is determined by the contract survey that was sent to all members in April. Over the next several weeks your committee will continue to draft proposals in reverse priority based on the surveys; these proposals will then be shared with the company during weekly bargaining sessions. As your coworkers, the committee knows that wages and other economic subjects are the highest priority and those will be negotiated with Motivate last.

Our power as a union, however, does not come from the bargaining committee talking with management - it comes from all of us working together as a nationwide movement. Union reps in each of our cities (NYC/JC, BOS, CHI, DC, SF) are currently working on forming Contract Action (CAT) Teams to build out this movement from the bottom up. To learn more about how to get involved, please reach out to a shop steward, bargaining committee member (listed below), or other union rep in your city, and stay tuned!