MASSACHUSETTS
NURSE NEWSLETTER :: May 2006
MetroWest Medical Center
nurses hold informational picket
The registered nurses of the Leonard
Morse campus of MetroWest Medical Center conducted informational
picketing outside the main entrance to the facilityfrom 1–5
p.m. on May 1 (International Labor Day) as contract talks with
management stalled over the nurses’ call for a competitive
wage scale with area hospitals and the maintenance of their current
level of health insurance benefits.
“We want the public to know that we are losing valuable
staff and, with them, our ability to deliver quality care—simply
because our wages are among the lowest in the region,” said
Laura Hunter-Brooks, RN, an intensive care unit nurse and the
co-chair of the nurses’ local bargaining unit.
The 221 registered nurses at MetroWest/Leonard Morse are attempting
to negotiate a new contract and their first with Vanguard Health
Systems, a multi-billion dollar, for-profit health care corporation
that is based in Nashville, Tenn.
At a time when the competition for nurses is intense and the salaries
of nurses are on the rise, the nurses at MetroWest Medical Center
are currently paid as much as 30 percent below nurses working
at major teaching hospitals in Boston and Worcester, and as much
as 24 percent below like-sized community hospitals in the area.
For example, MetroWest nurses at the top of the pay scale currently
make as much as $16 an hour less than nurses at Brigham &
Women’s Hospital, and between $5.50 and $10 an hour below
wages proposed to their counterparts at nearby Caritas Norwood
Hospital and the wages that already in place at Newton-Wellesley
Hospital.
“We are talking about nurses making between $11,000 and
$32,000 less than at other facilities, where you would do the
same job and, in most cases, have better staffing levels,”
Hunter-Brooks added. “How can you expect to keep your experienced
nurses, and how can you expect to recruit younger nurses in the
face of such a stark salary discrepancy? The answer is you can’t.
And in the last two month, we have lost at least three qualified
nurses due to this issue alone.”
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Mom and son agree: the nurses at
Metro-West Medical Center are priceless. |
In response to the nurses call for
a competitive wage, Vanguard has proposed a two year and nine
month contract in which the first year is the same increase they
offered the non-unionized nurses on the Framingham Union campus
(a 9 percent increase) which would still leave the nurses 10 to
16 percent behind other hospitals in the area. When management
offered to implement that increase at the Leonard Morse campus
in Natick, the nurses took the proposal to their membership for
a vote in March. The nurses voted by an 8–1 margin to reject
implementing that increase.
Health insurance
The other key sticking point for the nurses is the issue of health
insurance benefits. The nurses are seeking language in their new
contract that would maintain the same level of health benefits
they currently enjoy. In addition, they want to include a guarantee
that the hospital cannot make any future changes to their health
benefit unless those changes result in a plan that is “substantially
the same or better than the current benefit.”
The hospital has refused to include any written guarantee in the
nurses’ contract to protect their benefits in the future.
According to Lyn Shaw, RN, a recovery room nurse and co-chair
of the bargaining unit, “This will be the third different
for-profit employer we have had here at MetroWest in the last
10 years. We are tired of having the rug pulled out from under
us and we think we deserve a written commitment that we can expect
to keep what we currently have for the life of our contract.”
