Fifteen months of fighting has ended abruptly but more amicably for both sides of a contract dispute at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital.

Late Thursday, the hospital Board of Directors voted unanimously to approve a five-year contract with nurses of the California Nurses Association.

The CNA ratified the agreement on Wednesday with 98.5 percent of the membership in favor.

The contract calls for a 7.5 percent salary increase over five years, retention of pivotal charge nurse positions and no-cost health care benefits for individual nurses.

No layoffs are planned. The new contract is effective immediately and expires in March 2019.

"This agreement represents a tremendous amount of hard work from everyone at the bargaining table," Rafael Garcia, SVMH board president said in a press release.

"The Board's focus has always been to achieve an agreement in the best interest of Salinas Valley Memorial, our patients and the nurses who care for them. We have accomplished that with this agreement."

"They agreed with us and now we have a contract," RN Vanessa Lockard said when reached for comment on Thursday. Lockard, who served on the CNA negotiating team, said the nurses were never after money; it was all about the patients.

The contract comes after months of bargaining talks, mediation and fact finding. Those avenues exhausted, the nurses threatened to strike for one day last week. The hospital board met in a special session before the strike day and announced its plans to accept the agreement.

Lockard, who has worked at SVMH for the past 20 years, applauded the board for its leadership. "I am ecstatic that the board did not make it come down to that," she said.

The turning point in the conflict, for her, came when the board held the administration accountable for reaching an agreement. They saw the value of the charge nurse as a resource, she said.

But SVMH officials also did their part, an administrator said. They agreed to terms recommended in April by a neutral mediator — terms that leaned toward the nurses' side.

"The state appointed Factfinder provided us an opportunity to reach a fair agreement," said Pete Delgado, SVMH president and CEO.

"We value our nurses and look forward to working together to provide outstanding patient care."

The charge nurse position was to be reduced and rewritten under the hospital's restructuring plan. The nurses vehemently opposed the changes and they became a major point of contention.

Now the charge nurse will remain. Nurses say retention of this position will strengthen quality of care at the hospital — a win for the community.

One of the other victories for nurses, cited by Lockert, was retention of the Assignment Despite Objection form. The ADO allows a nurse to take on an assignment and report in written form any objection she has to it because of an indentified risk factor to the patient. The administration had come up with its own process and proposed to do away with the ADO favored by nurses, Lockard said.

"It's a huge victory that they will recognize our ADOs," she said.

The CNA membership at SVMH is about 500 nurses, Lockard said. The top-tiered salary earners are among the highest paid nurses in Northern California.

SVMH is a 269-bed acute care facility with an annual operating budget of $335 million.

In a report to the SVMH board Thursday, CFO Augustine Lopez presented a financial report that identified gross revenue for April at $10.6 million. A previous report shows SVMH assets near $424 million for the same month.

Also:

• Gross commercial charges — $2.8 million
• Gross Medicare charges — $2.6 million
• Gross MediCal charges — $10 million
• Other charges: $4.8 million.
• Salaries and wages cost $12 million a month, including compensated absences.

Original post: http://www.thecalifornian.com/story/news/2015/05/28/salinas-valley-memorial-hospital-nurses-settle-contract/28129481/