The California Nurses Association, which is on a contract roll recently, has won the first contract for 200 RNs at San Leandro Hospital under new owner Alameda Health System.

The San Leandro acute-care facility, the subject of years of debate and conflict, has been part of Sutter Health for a number of years, but shifts to Alameda Health System's growing network at month-end.

The union said the new pact includes "prior contract standards" from CNA's contract with Sutter, along with "some improvements in retiree health and pension benefits." The contract was approved by CNA members at San Leandro Hospital on Tuesday.

The new agreement runs through year-end 2015. All RNs will receive pay increases totaling 3 percent during the contract's term.

Separately, Wright Lassiter III, Alameda Health System's CEO and the head honcho at its Highland Hospital, told the Business Times Oct. 15 that the transfer of ownership will occur at 12:01 am on Oct. 31. "Our teams are working feverishly to get things done" on the transition, he said at the time.

Sutter wanted at various times to close San Leandro Hospital or transfer it to Alameda Health System or another operator as a long-term-care facility, but Lassiter and crew plan to give it a go as an a full-service hospital, along with an ER.

The feisty nurses union, meanwhile, has won new contracts for 700 RNs at John Muir Health's Concord campus, for more than 3,000 registered nurses and several hundred technicians at Sutter Health hospitals in the East Bay and Solano County, and about 680 RNs at Fremont's Washington Hospital in the last month or so. But they settled for far smaller pay increases than had been in the case in many previous labor-management tussles involving the Oakland-based CNA.