Bargaining Unit Updates

Worcester School Nurses
The MNA school nurses in Worcester continue to work on securing a successor contract; the big hurdle remaining is in reaching an agreement around the school committee’s proposed changes to their health insurance. There are also many other professional and economic issues that the nurses are committed to obtaining in this contract.

Mercy Medical Center
The registered nurses at Mercy Medical Center have started negotiations and they are pressing management on creating a Retiree Medical Savings Plan in addition to staffing language and improvements in other professional and economic areas.

Wachusett Regional School District
The RNs in the Wachusett Regional School District (WRSD) recently celebrated a huge victory after they ratified a new three-year agreement that—finally—puts them on par with other area school nurses in terms of both pay and benefits. The agreement, which was ratified in October, will result in salary increases that will earn each nurse an additional $11,000 to $12,000 annually—based on where they are located on the salary steps—by the time the agreement expires in 2010. These increases will help put the WRSD nurses’ salaries on par with their area colleagues, most of whom have been earning a professional wage of almost 42 percent more annually. In addition to their success in achieving a professional pay scale, the nurses also secured contract language that:

• Increases the number of sick days that the nurses earn annually
• Transfers any unused personal days to unused sick days at the end of the school year.
• Provides them with bereavement leave
• Provides fair monetary compensation for the time nurses spend in professional development courses
• Offers reimbursement to all WRSD nurses who successfully complete the National Certification for School Nurse Test
• Allows two bargaining unit members to be released from work to attend the MNA’s annual Chairs Summit

The 14 nurses who make up the WRSD bargaining unit worked tireless to this secure this contract, and their fight spanned more than three years and two separate negotiations. With a professional pay scale and contract now in place the Wachusett Regional School District will now be able to retain—and recruit—the expert school nurses that the region’s children have come to depend on.

Merrimack Valley Hospital
The 150 nurses of Merrimack Valley Hospital in Haverhill have begun negotiations for a new contract, seeking a competitive wage scale and differentials that will allow the hospital to compete with other facilities in the region. The nurses are paid as much as 30 percent below nurses at other facilities on the North Shore and Essex County, and have lost more than 40 nurses—nearly a third of their bargaining unit—in the last year.

As a result, nurses are working excessive on-call and mandatory overtime, and they are being floated at an alarming rate. The hospital is seeking to compound the problem by demanding contract language to allow them to send nurses home and use their benefit time during low census periods. In addition to seeking a competitive wage, the nurses want language to limit on-call, prohibit mandatory overtime if a nurses feels it is unsafe for his or her patients, as well as language to limit inappropriate floating.

The hospital is demanding dramatic changes in the nurses’ health insurance benefit, including tripling co-pays under the plan, while also instituting deductibles for in-patient and out-patient services. It had also had imposed a deadline for negotiating an agreement on the issue, and had threatened to implement changes if an agreement is not reached by Jan. 1. However, after the MNA filed an unfair labor practice charge against the hospital for bad faith bargaining, the hospital withdrew its deadline and agreed to negotiate any health insurnace changes in the context of the entire agrreement.

Newton Wellesley Hospital
The nurses of Newton Wellesley Hospital are attempting to negotiate a new contract that features an important debate over protections for newly licensed nurses, specifically, providing a year moratorium on the assignment of charge duties to these novice nurses to allow them to develop their skills and experience before taking on this complex role.

They are also seeking language to require negotiations with the union to ensure safe and reasonable introduction of new technology to their practice.

The nurses are also seeking a competitive wage with other hospitals in the region and the Partners system to ensure there are enough nurses to deliver quality patient care. And they are also hoping to convince the hospital to make a real commitment to staff the hospital with regular full time and part time nursing staff. Hospital management has engaged in an expensive effort to use internationally- recruited temporary nursing staff and 18 month travelers as an alternative to providing adequate core staffing. The nurses are committed to placing limits on the use of temporary nursing staff.

Northeast Health Corp.
The nurses of Northeast Health Corp (Beverly Hospital, Addison Gilbert Hospital) are using their union rights to combat recent efforts by hospital management to target nurses for unwarranted discipline. The nurses have instituted a petition drive within the hospital and are mobilizing the membership to stand up to the unsavory management practices. They are also rallying to the aide of nurses who have been the target of management abuses.

Caritas Carney Hospital
In light of recent reports of a potential closure of Caritas Carney Hospital, a decision that would be devastating to the Dorchester community, as well as the entire Greater Boston health care system, the nurses and the MNA have begun an effort to mobilize support—in the hospital community, the community at large, and within the legislature and city council— to ensure Carney’s survival.

Falmouth Hospital
A new patient care unit has opened at Falmouth Hospital (part of Cape Cod Health Care). It is a step-down unit that has been dubbed a CICU. It is comprised of eight separate rooms (i.e., eight beds).

These rooms were originally part of Med-Surg 4, so now that floor is “overstaffed” with RNs. Sue Wing, R.N., C.O.O., is committed to no lay offs as a result of the new unit opening, so RNs have been floated from M/S 4 to other patient-care areas where they are qualified to work.

Falmouth Hospital’s interpretation of the contract’s salary scale—as it applies to those nurses reaching the top of the scale during the contract’s duration—was challenged. The resolution is that those RNs will step up to whatever the current top step is and then will not receive additional raises until they have been at the top step for a year. They will have retroactive monies distributed.

Falmouth Hospital administration and the MNA nurse committee continue to work together to assure that safe, quality care is delivered to its patients.

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