TALK ABOUT DEDICATION. For 18 months, four members of Local 2699 — employees at Columbia River Mental Health — persisted in a bargaining process that was fraught with frustration.

The negotiations were often contentious and laborious due mostly to the lack of experience of the management team, who were unfamiliar with the bargaining process. Only one had minimal experience in contract negotiations and none had been in negotiations with this Local before.

Not only that, but one of the three managers involved in bargaining was replaced halfway through the negotiations. In contrast, only one member of the union team was new to labor negotiations.

But, in spite of the frustrations, the team patiently persisted. So dedicated was one member, Tracey Arney, that she bargained during her entire pregnancy. She gave birth on Jan. 17, five days after the contract was signed.

Their dedication eventually led to a final contract that was overwhelmingly accepted by the union in December and was signed on Jan. 12.

Council 2 Staff Representative Trina Young, who led the team, says she was proud to be able to work with a team of this caliber.

The Local represents mental health care professionals who work directly with clients. In addition to Arney, the union team consisted of Local president Sonia Pitterle, Deborah Miller and Michelle Erickson.

After the first 11 sessions, the union was forced to take back an unacceptable offer to the membership to be voted on in August last year, Young explains.

When the proposal was rejected by 99.5 percent of union members who voted, the union requested mediation through the Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service.

When the team returned to the table with a federal mediator, the management team said the package that the union had just rejected was their final offer, Young says.

“They told us that we could repackage it any way we wanted, but the total cost of the package would be the same,” she explains.

“After two subsequent sessions, the union discovered $170,000 extra money in the package proposal. When this was brought to the management team’s attention, we were told that they had found that error earlier, and revised the package, but forgot to tell us about it.”

After the union suggested modified proposals, the management team eventually met the union’s needs by offering an acceptable wage and health care package, which included modest cola and medical insurance increases.

But the management team reneged on the tentative agreement and it took two months of additional bargaining to obtain a document that accurately represented the contents of the tentative agreement, Young says.