Yesterday,11/25, your bargaining team met with management for day four of negotiations, and we made our values clear before we ever sat down at the table. We held our first bargaining day food drive, and WSNA nurses showed up. Dozens and dozens of union nurses brought non-perishable food items to the hospital and to the bargaining table.

Because of your generosity we collected hundreds of items for the Tacoma Rescue Mission. These donations will directly support the community we care for every day. This is who we are. Our work and our contract are about more than wages. They are about making Tacoma General a safer place to work, a safer place to receive care, and a stronger partner to our community. Your actions also showed management what happens when nurses stand shoulder to shoulder. We have the numbers. We have the unity. We have the power.

While we were giving, management showed once again how much they want to take. After we laid out why staffing ratios must remain in our contract and why removing them is a non-starter, they came back with the exact same proposal to strike ratios completely. They want to rely on the Hospital Staffing Committee to weaken protections they cannot get through bargaining. Ratios in the contract protect our patients, our licenses, and our practice, and we will not back down.

Management also continues to take charge shifts away from WSNA nurses and hand them to CANMs. Every time a CANM acts as a charge nurse, that is a shift taken from a union nurse. It is that simple. It also keeps skilled, experienced bedside nurses out of leadership on the floor where they are needed most. And it creates built-in barriers when your supervisor is also your charge nurse. We will continue fighting for charge nurses to be union nurses every shift, every time.

Even with management rejecting most of our proposals, we secured several tentative agreements. We locked in that call-back status applies when you are placed on call, not when your shift starts. This stops the practice of cancelling call status moments before shift start and ensures nurses receive call-back pay appropriately. We also reached agreements on increasing recall from layoff rights from two weeks to three weeks, expanding protections for nurses who walk picket lines with other unions, and allowing nurses who return within six months to retain their seniority.

Our Economic Proposal

When management countered our first economic proposal, they brought wages that would keep TG nurses about two dollars behind St. Joe’s. They rejected every premium and differential proposal we submitted and even proposed eliminating the BSN premium.

Yesterday, we delivered our second economic proposal. Before presenting it, we showed management decades of wage history between TG and St. Joe’s. Our hospitals have remained close in wages for years, with each pulling ahead at different points in bargaining. Our proposal maintains that historic pattern and keeps TG competitive.

We proposed a general wage increase of 7 percent plus an additional $2.75 at every step. This places TG slightly ahead of St. Joe’s and reflects the reality of recruitment, retention, and the high level of skill TG nurses bring to their units. We made modest adjustments on premiums and differentials, but we remain clear that management must do far more.

We also proposed increasing LPN experience credit from three steps to five, with current RNs receiving upward step adjustments to recognize their experience. And we packaged adding Juneteenth as a holiday at TG if MultiCare institutes it elsewhere, paired with management agreeing to establish a Racial Justice Committee.

When nurses give, our community thrives. When management takes, our hospital suffers.

We show up. We give back. We lead with integrity and care.

Management comes to the table asking for takeaways and weakened protections.

We give. They take.

And together, we will make sure that this contract turns that tide.

In Solidarity,
Therese Juntunen, NTICU
Michelle Stevenson, 5/6 MSICU/PCU
Sarah Huber, Emergency Department
Christina Nicholson, Resource RN
George Murray, NTICU
Marc Jebousek, Emergency Department
Anna Vermaire, Pulse Cardiac Short Stay
Anna Glorioso-Kaufmann, Operating Room
Jaime Cary, Labor and Delivery
Rachel Ballou-Church, Medical Oncology

Questions? Contact one of your officers, one of your bargaining team members, or Nurse Rep Jared Richardson (jrichardson@wsna.org).