In our Dec. 18 email, we promised you a more detailed breakout of Providence’s latest proposal and how it will affect all of us. It’s not a pretty picture. On issue after issue, Sacred Heart management continues to take their marching orders from Providence headquarters, including reducing or eliminating PTO and EIT, and refusing to accept common-sense contract language on safe staffing and workplace violence prevention. We deserve better.

Here’s a rundown of what management’s proposal means for you:

Paid Time Off (PTO)

• Current nurses maintain accrual, but new nurses move to new plan, creating two-class system.
• Zero additional PTO offered to offset elimination of EIT and sizeable gaps in new STD and state Family and Medical Leave plan. Nurses will need to dip into PTO to cover the 7-day waiting period.
• Nurses will need to use PTO to top off STD and SFML coverage to reach full income replacement.

Short-Term Disability (STD)

• This is much like an insurance plan, not an earned benefit like EIT. A third party determines whether you’ll receive any coverage and how much.
• Offers only partial income replacement
• Nurses already have access to purchase short-term disability plans at reasonable prices.

Earned Illness Time (EIT)

• Proposal includes elimination of EIT. While current nurses may continue to access any earned time in the bank, when that’s used up, it’s gone.
• Elimination of EIT accrual.

State Family & Medical Leave Act (SFMLA)

• Intended for serious illness only, not “sick days.” Up to $1,000 per week, with 7-day waiting period during which you will have to use your PTO.
• Funded primarily by working taxpayers, including nurses at Sacred Heart.

Medical Benefits

• Allows Providence to increase premiums more than they can now
• Allows Providence to charge nurse a higher percentage of the total premium, with Providence paying a lower percentage.

Safe Staffing

• Rejected our proposal to ensure staffing levels that allows nurses to take meal and rest breaks and utilize available time off.
• Rejected our proposal that safe staffing ratios be maintained at all times including meal and rest breaks

Workplace Violence

• Rejected our proposal for Providence to:
  • station security personnel around the premises
  • establish security stations in strategic areas of the hospital
  • require security personnel be posted at the rooms of violent patients
  • enhance time-off benefits for nurses injured as a result of workplace violence

Retro Pay

• Providence has refused WSNA’s efforts for full retro pay every nurse, from supplemental to full-time nurses. Instead of full retro, they have instead offered a $1,500 bonus that is pro-rated according to FTE. In Providence’s proposal, supplemental nurses receive no raise in 2019, 0.5 FTE nurses receive $750, etc. We will continue our push for full retro pay for every nurse including supplementals.

Questions? Contact WSNA Nurse Representative Jaclyn Perkins at jperkins@wsna.org or send an email to shmc@wsna.org.