Massachusetts Nurse | August 2004

Faulkner nurses approve contract with large pay hike, language improvement

After nine long months of negotiations with management, RNs at Faulkner Hospital in Boston voted to ratify a new three-year contract that includes landmark language on floating and wage increases that average between 25 percent and 29 percent over the life of the agreement.

The contract also includes improvements to the pension benefit; significant expansion of the insurance program; reductions in the cost of benefits for part-time RNs; language addressing the issue of workplace violence; and provisions for payment of the negotiating team members for their time spent at negotiations.

The tentative agreement was reached on June 20, 2004 following a marathon negotiation session that lasted well into the morning.

More than 300 registered nurses are represented by the MNA at Faulkner Hospital. The nurses had been negotiating their contact since last October, with 19 sessions held in total—and with 11 of those sessions being held before a federal mediator. The key issues that were in dispute included:

• The need to provide full staffing at the facility and, as a result, to end the dangerous practice of forcing nurses to be transferred to areas where they are not qualified to safely care for patients (floating)
• The call for a salary level on a par with other Partnersowned facilities (including Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Newton-Wellesley Hospital)
• Improvements in the nurses’ pension plan and health insurance benefits On April 27, the bargaining unit overwhelmingly voted to authorize the negotiating committee to call a strike against the hospital—an authorization that followed a day of informational picketing in late March that brought hundreds of nurses and supporters to the streets in front of the hospital.

"The issues that had been preventing this dispute from being settled had immediate and important implications for the safety of patients at Faulkner Hospital," said Kathy Glennon, RN and chair person of the MNA bargaining unit at Faulkner. "For the nurses and patients here, this was never about a contract.it was a matter of safety; a matter of quality care; a matter of life and death. We're grateful to know that the management team at Faulkner finally understood the depth of these issues and that it chose to do the right thing on behalf of patients."

Eliminating the dangerous practice of floating

According to the hospital’s own statistics, at least one nurse at Faulkner was being floated on every shift, every day of the week—resulting in at least 90 occurrences of floating per month. The Faulkner nurses recognized that in order to curb this dangerous practice, they needed to incorporate limits on the practice into their contract, as well as make the hospital a more attractive place to work by improving the wages, benefits and working conditions at the hospital.

The newly negotiated floating provision ensures that no nurse will be floated to an area where he or she is not competent to practice. Travel and agency nurses will be required to float before a bargaining unit nurse is floated. If a nurse is floated, he or she will be paid a float differential of $2.00 per hour.

"Neither the RNs at Faulkner nor the hospital's management team wanted to have to depend on floating as a way of providing patients with adequate nurse staffing levels," said Glennon, "especially given that there is a tremendous amount of new research out there that says the practice of floating often leads to serious, life-threatening patient infections and complications. We are lucky to have been able to work with management to start putting an end to this dangerous practice."

Pay on par with other Partners hospitals Located less than ten miles away from another major Partners Health Care facility, RNs at Faulkner found themselves providing the same level of services (and often to the same patients), while earning between 13 and 26 percent less than their peers down the road. As a result, the bargaining unit was looking for pay parity when it entered these contract talks nine months ago.

"These contract issues were all interconnected when it came to the matter of adequate staffing and safe patient care," added Allison Zimmon, the MNA labor representative who works with the Faulkner bargaining unit. "If RNs at one hospital are making almost 26 percent less than their peers at an affiliated hospital seven miles down the road, it becomes increasingly more difficult to attract and retain experienced and qualified RNs. This was exactly what was happening at Faulkner, which, of course, compounded the issue of floating."

Under the new contract, most RNs' wages will increase by an average of between 25 percent and 29 percent over the life of the agreement.a move that many members of the bargaining unit thought was long overdue given Partners' status as the most profitable health care provider in the commonwealth. "We're very happy that we were able to ratify such an improved contract," said Glennon. "These changes are dramatically going to improve the level of care that RNs here are able to provide to patients."