Seattle Children’s nurses ratify contract

Seattle Children’s nurses ratified a new contract after nine months of arduous bargaining that went for 36 bargaining sessions.

The contract goes into effect on February 2, continues through the end of February 2029 and includes full retro pay back to 9/1/25.

Harnessing an incredible amount of collective power from its nurses who were engaged and vocal throughout, the bargaining team achieved a strong contract that includes:

• Market-based increases to the wage scale, taking wages up an average of 15% by March of 2028. The scale provides higher overall wage increases for more junior nurses, where nurses are further behind market and recruitment/retention issues are most prevalent.
• Individual nurses will see an average wage increase of over $13 per hour over the life of the contract.
• Increases in eight premiums, including incentives aimed at keeping experienced nurses working nights to protect patient and nurse safety.
• Addressing depleted sick leave banks, the contract provides increased sick leave accruals, a one-time deposit of hours into nurses’ sick leave banks, and new terms that should reduce the strain on nurses’ sick leave banks.
• Four new protected leaves including on the job injury leave, workplace violence leave, post-shift fatigue leave, and death of a patient leave.
• Robust new workplace violence language that requires Seattle Children’s to provide a safe environment free from identifiable, preventable, recognized workplace hazards and to commit to practical, common sense measures to prevent and address workplace violence. These measures include two dedicated security personnel on the psychiatry and behavioral medicine unit.
• Detailed language on the interplay between new technologies and nursing care that preserves nurses’ exercise of clinical judgment and protects nurses’ skills and decision-making.
• Language expanding the Hospital’s commitments to anti-racism and non-discrimination, protecting nurses’ rights to rest and meal breaks, to provide predictability in nurses’ schedules, and a host of other improvements.

In these negotiations, Seattle Children’s departed from its long-standing collaborative working relationship with its nurses’ union and proposed a long list of takeaways. The nurses successfully fought off the hospital’s aggressively anti-union, anti-nurse proposals, including a mandatory arbitration proposal that would have prevented nurses from going to court or pursuing class action lawsuits if the hospital violates nurses’ rights under the law.