MASSACHUSETTS NURSE NEWSLETTER :: March 2006

Cape Cod Hospital RNs ratify three-year contract

The registered nurses represented by the MNA at Cape Cod Hospital recently ratified a new three-year contract that includes a number of important patient safety protections, including:

• A written commitment by the hospital to adhere to specific core RN staffing levels in all areas of the hospital.
• The formation of a union-management staffing committee to evaluate triggers (patients requiring telemetry monitoring, chemotherapy drips, etc.) that would call for improvements in the core staffing levels on certain floors.
• Language requiring balanced admissions of patients to avoid overloading specific floors based on available staff, illness level of patients and skills of staff on the floor.
• A guaranteed right of every nurse to refuse to work any mandatory overtime if he or she feels too fatigued or ill to provide safe patient care.
  In addition, the pact includes pay hikes that increase nurses’ salaries by 20 percent to 25 percent over the life of the agreement depending on the nurse’s years of experience.

It also includes a provision that will prevent the layoff of 60 nurses who work under a special weekend incentive plan that paid the nurses a higher salary and granted them full insurance benefits for 24 hours of work. The hospital had threatened to terminate the program and layoff the nurses as of April 1, 2006. The new contract postpones the elimination of the special weekend benefit for a year, and by the time the program is eliminated, nurses will be allowed to move several steps up the salary scale, plus be paid a $5 per hour weekend shift differential to make them as close to whole as possible.

“We are very pleased with the agreement and the fact that the hospital has agreed to be more accountable for the provision of safe staffing levels throughout the hospital,” said Marilyn Rouette, RN, chair of the MNA bargaining unit for the nurses. “We also hope the agreement we reached to preserve our weekend nurses will work to ensure optimum staffing on the weekend shifts. The test going forward will be to ensure that the commitments made in this contract are upheld so that our patients receive the care they deserve.”

The settlement comes after months of negotiations and an intense public battle between nurses and management over dueling views of the staffing conditions at the hospital. The nurses went public with their concerns in late February, after the hospital had reneged on commitments to include core staffing levels in the agreement; increased the patient assignments of nurses, and announced the layoff of the 60 nurses working in the weekend program.

In response, nurses took out full page ads in the local paper, circulated petitions among the public and began to mobilize for an informational picket. More than 7,000 public signatures were gathered in a two-week period, and hundreds of patients called the hospital in support of the nurses.

On March 1, six days before the planned picketing was to begin and a few days before the hospital was to begin the bumping process for the layoff, a marathon negotiating session was held where the agreement was reached.

“The ultimate winners in this negotiation were the patients, as the issues on the table in dispute were all about them. And if management honors this agreement, all our patients will receive better care, our nurses will be more satisfied and the hospital will be more successful,” Rouette concluded.