Let’s Celebrate our Nurses! 

Join us on Tuesday, May 27, 2025, in room LL3 to enjoy a catered lunch to celebrate with our nurses! Our union will be downstairs on the lower level with Caruso’s, look for our blue WSNA sign. Come get union updates, learn about unsafe staffing forms, and opportunities to get involved.

Date: May 27, 2025

Time: Noon – 2 pm, 4-6:30 pm

Location: Lower-level 3 (LL3)

May Hospital Staffing Committee Update

Our members on the Hospital Staffing Committee want to say THANK YOU for continuing to file unsafe staffing reports. We have seen a three-fold increase in reporting from nurses since March and this has made an impact. Providence has reported that they regularly meet the compliance goal of 80% adherence to the staffing plan. We have noticed the more unsafe staffing forms that are submitted, the more the compliance number has gone down. For the month of April, management reported a 67% compliance for the night shift.

RCW 70.41.420 requires hospitals to maintain 80% compliance with their staffing plan starting July 1, 2025. This means St. Luke’s needs to have two charge nurses at least 80% of the time. They say this is their biggest gap in meeting compliance. If hospitals do not meet this requirement, they are subject to fines from the Department of Health.

Food for thought- the staffing plan requiring two charge nurses is a MINIMUM STAFFING STANDARD plan. This means both management and nursing agree it’s the minimum number of direct care staff needed to safely provide care. We have scheduled an additional meeting for June 5 to try to process through all the forms submitted. We thank you and encourage you to continue reporting anytime you feel you’re placed in an unsafe situation.

Take a hike with us!

All WSNA nurses are invited to hike Bowl & Pitcher at Riverside State Park. We will meet in the parking lot on Wednesday June 11 at 9:30am. We encourage you to don your blue WSNA shirt, grab a friend from St. Luke’s or another WSNA facility, and get some fresh air. Discovery passes or a day pass is required and can be purchased here. Please RSVP with our link so we know who’s coming!

Conference Committee Update

Our local nurse leaders met with management for our joint conference committee on May 22, 2025. We meet quarterly in an effort to address non-contract issues affecting nurses. Our agenda included the following items

• Shift incentives for RNs
• Night shift food options
• Education requirements

Our WSNA Chair Jeff Dubrawski advocated FIERCLY for all our nurses about extra shift incentive. He referenced Providence’s core values in trying to get management to explain to us why RN licensure has repeatedly been left out of shift incentive. We expressed that providing incentives to all disciplines since January while actively excluding RNs has created poor morale and we feel correlates to the lack of consistency in having second-charge nurses. Management’s position is that they are removing all incentives in St. Luke’s June 1 due to a justice issue. An additional conversation about upcoming compliance and the increased number of ADOs filed we feel demonstrates a lack of safety and incentives could help improve those staffing numbers. Our nurses have suggested at past staffing committee meetings that incentive could be helpful and to date, we have not received any communication about bargaining incentives for nurses.

Ultimately after multiple ways of asking why RNs have been excluded from shift incentive, their position is that they could provide no reason for why RNs have been excluded since January and that due to justice, they are removing all incentives after June 1, 2025.

Our union advocated that we are always agreeable to meet about incentives or improvements in wages for our nurses. We shared with management other ways registered nurses could be incentivized, including double time pay for work on day off or an incentive program in MOU format that could be triggered under certain circumstances. WSNA has sent this MOU to the Employer as of May 23, 2025, for their reference should they want to engage in discussions about offering RNs something similar.

Take home point about incentive money- management can always offer nurses more money, however, they must bargain it with the Union and our union is always agreeable to having those conversations.

For the other agenda items, night shift workers can expect to see some new food options available starting in June. Management worked with food services to trial new food options that may not require an escort to the cafeteria to grab. If a nurse is requesting time for paid education days, the Employer may require a CE verification form. Speak with your manager if you have education time coming up.

Retention bonus

Our union reached out to management in response to many nurses asking where their retention bonus is. If you didn’t know, in our last round of bargaining we secured a retention bonus, you can read that here. We asked management to provide us with the date that is due to nurses and will proceed with a contract grievance if we don’t receive this. Stay tuned!

WSNA St. Luke’s Nurses Night Out!

We had multiple nurses attend a recent Inland Empire Nurse’s Association (IENA) Gala. This event was a wonderful event to network with a catered meal and for professional development. Pictured above: Jenny Galassi, Jeff Dubrawski, Jennifer Abercrombie, Noel Wise, Gayle Slater, and Tashina Perkins.

If you’re interested in getting more involved in our union- reach out to your nurse rep Alle Machorro today at amachorro@wsna.org. Unsure if you’re a member? Sign up today!