Press Release
Nurses Postpone Dignity Health Protests Friday as Dignity Requests Talks to Resolve Dispute
Candelight rallies planned at Dignity Health hospitals across California and Nevada this Friday to protest a threatened rollback in retirement benefits were put on hold late Wednesday after company officials agreed to meet over any potential changes in the Dignity pension plan.
RNs had planned to hold rallies at 19 California and Nevada hospitals after nurses received a letter from Dignity announcing a unilateral 30 percent reduction in monthly pension benefits for Dignity RN retirees through a change in the formula used to determine the amount of monthly benefit.
That change has been put in abeyance as Dignity officials, in a letter to the California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee-Nevada which represent 12,000 Dignity RNs, offered “to meet in good faith in hopes of reaching a mutually acceptable resolution.”
Under the latest collective bargaining contract just signed in late August, both Dignity and the RNs agreed that “any change in benefits and all other terms and conditions of the pension plan during the life of the Agreement shall be negotiated between the parties.”
CNA and NNOC-Nevada bargaining director Fernando Losada confirmed that the nurses will meet with Dignity to discuss any potential changes in the pension plan as stipulated under the contract.
At the same time, Losada added, RNs remain opposed to any rollback in retirement security for RNs, many of whom have devoted years of service to Dignity patients and communities where the hospitals are based.