What happened on day 3?

Our bargaining team worked extensively on this day to present economic proposals to the Employer. We proposed full across the board raises and premiums to management, including:

• Significant across the board raises totaling over 30% over 3 years of the next contract
• A NEW premium for nurses who float off their unit for their regularly scheduled shifts
• Increasing stand by premiums and delineating separate call rates for mandatory and voluntary standby
• Increasing education and certifications premiums and allowing nurses to stack one certification with one education premium
• NEW premium for nurses who precept daily nursing students, not just practicum or new hired nurses
• Increasing night shift and charge premiums to reflect the need to retain experienced nurses on night shift and to account for the increased responsibilities of charge nurses.

Our team shared perspectives on why these and other economic proposals matter to our nurses. An overwhelming number of our nurses shared with us that the burden of floating and precepting is a daily and repeated experience. These repeated experiences without appropriate compensation can lead to burn out with our nurses. Compensation for the value that nurses add to these spaces to reflect their depth and breadth of clinical knowledge is a no brainer for us.

We shared with management that our nurses work at this facility and while Sacred Heart is known to be a leader in it’s region for services and care provided to various populations including NICU, pediatrics, special pathogens, and trauma services, our wages fall much behind other hospitals providing similar levels of service. Our hospitals in our immediate region don’t provide services at the same level we do, but wages are barely keeping up with theirs. We don’t feel this reflects fair compensation for the skills, education, and knowledge our nurses’ possess to care for our community.

What did we receive from management?

Management responded to some of our proposals regarding the following items-

• Low census rotation
• Increasing the clinical float groups so more nurses float to more units
• Rejecting language to delineate pediatric and adult IV therapy related to layoff procedures
• Rejecting language proposed by WSNA regarding having one vote on staffing plans be from a registered nurse as opposed to any nursing staff committee member including CNAs and LPNs.
• Rejected WSNA’s proposal to incorporate language from WA state law surrounding mandatory call
• Rejected WSNA’s proposal to have clinical documentation specialists receive the same PTO, EIT, and leaves of absence language as the rest of our bargaining unit.

Management passed their own proposals on non-economic items including the following-

• Significant modifications and takeaways to our supplemental appendix
  • Removing C, D, and E options for nurses
  • Changing the language from “be available” to “work”
  • Increasing the minimum amount of hours to be worked
  • Adding language that nurses cannot choose their supplemental option without mutual agreement from management
• Increasing the maximum amount of mandatory low census that nurses will be subject to from 48 to 80.
• Asking to discuss potentially replacing the layoff language entirely

Our team returns to the table on December 16, December 22, and December 30. We will continue to exchange proposals and have further conversations on both economic and non-economic issues.

We want to take a moment and extend a HUGE thank you to our 8^th floor nurses organized by Laurel Rosenfield. These nurses created lunch bags with snacks and fuel for our bargaining team for their dedication to the nurses at Sacred Heart. If your unit is interested in feeding our bargaining team for a meal- please reach out to our union representative.

Another huge THANK YOU to our WSNA RN observers. We had nurses from different units come and observe our bargaining session, wearing their blue in support of our union. Any nurse is welcome to observe our negotiations and can sign up here. We will contact you 24 hours prior to confirm your participation.

Questions? Want to get more involved? Contact a local officer or your WSNA Nurse Representative Alle Machorro at amachorro@wsna.org