RNs Celebrate at Eureka, Redwood Memorial, Queen of the Valley, St. Mary’s Apple Valley

Successfully concluding a lengthy dispute, registered nurses at one of the nation’s largest Catholic health chains, Providence St. Joseph Health (PSJH), Monday won historic tentative agreements for their first ever union contracts at Queen of the Valley in Napa and Redwood Memorial Hospital in Fortuna, as well as new agreements for St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka and St. Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley, California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU) announced today. 

Providence St. Joseph RNs say the agreements, which must be ratified by the nurses in membership meetings next week, include significant patient care and economic improvements and new workplace protections, representing a sharp break from a concessionary spiral that has been prevalent at other non-union, non-CNA Providence St. Joseph hospitals.

"RNs across the state have been working together to win these contracts for years. They put a plan in place and made it happen,” said CNA Co-President Deborah Burger, RN. “These agreements set a model for all St. Joseph RNs of higher standards for safe staffing, wages and benefits that can be won with a collective voice through CNA.”

The victory is especially significant for Queen of the Valley Medical Center RNs who voted to join CNA in 2013 and have carried out a long campaign to secure their first contract to win improvements for patients and their colleagues at the Napa hospital.

Key features in the tentative pacts include staffing improvements to promote patient safety, economic improvements to promote retention of experienced RNs and recruit new nurses, and critical healthcare protections, including a new RN supplement package for nurses injured in workplace violence or by needle stick accidents. Highlights include:

Queen of the Valley, Napa, CA(voting Tuesday, August 16):

• Safe staffing provisions—including staffing according to patients’ severity of illness or injury, rather than to an arbitrary grid.
• Establishment of a Professional Practice Committee (PPC) of elected bedside nurses to track staffing and better advocate for patients.
• Guaranteed meal and rest breaksto fight nurse fatigue which, according to many studies (including a 2006 study in the American Journal of Critical Care) can compromise patient care—and can negatively affect nurses’ health and safety.
• Economic gains to help with nurse recruitment and retention, that include across-the board wage increases and a new wage scale that will result in an overall average increase of 25 percent over the three years of the agreement.

"After nearly three years of fighting for our first contract, Queen nurses are looking forward to voting to approve a tentative agreement we can be proud of,” said Marylou Bahn, RN. “We won so much: protections for patients and safe staffing, and wages and benefits that we believe will finally put a stop to the exodus of nurses from Queen. It was a long, hard struggle, but Queen nurses stuck together and now we can be very proud of what we accomplished."

Redwood Memorial Hospital, Fortuna, CA, first contract (voting Thursday, Aug. 18:

• Safe staffing provisions—including staffing according to patients’ severity of illness/injury, rather than to an arbitrary grid. The contract also bans mandatory “floating” of nurses to St. Joseph Eureka, where they may be unprepared to work outside their typical unit, a practice which nurses say puts patients at risk.
• Establishment of a Professional Practice Committee (PPC) of elected bedside nurses to track staffing and better advocate for patients.
• Guaranteed meal and rest breaks to fight nurse fatigue.
• Economic gains including across-the-board wage increases of 14% over three years, a freeze on health care premium costs, and an increase in standby pay to $10/hour.
 

"Redwood Nurses voted to join CNA just last August, and here we are a year later with a great first contract,” said Redwood Memorial RN Linda Gelphman. “This contract does so much to ensure safe patient care, safe staffing, and protections for nurses. This victory could not have happened without the united efforts of Providence St. Joseph nurses across the state.”

St. Mary Medical Center, Apple Valley, CA(voting Wednesday, August 17):

• Improved health care benefits and protections, with no increases to costs during the life of the agreement.   
• Additional RN holiday and educational leave, including opportunities to advance nurse education with paid time off.
• Economic gains including an across-the-board wage increases of 14% over three years, new wage step increases for veteran nurses of 25-years and 30-years, and an increase in standby pay to $10/hour.

“Our nurses are excited, to the point of tears, with the gains we achieved for patients, staff and our community with this agreement,” said St. Mary’s RN Lois Sanders. “The power of all Providence St. Joseph Health hospitals standing strong and united helped to make all this possible.”

A new contract for Eureka nurses (voting Thursday, August 18). Contract features include:

• Safe staffing provisions—including requiring management to provide a certain number of break nurses, in accordance with how many RNs have been assigned patients, to ensure nurses are able to take meal and rest breaks, fighting fatigue.
• Return to a “float pool,” meaning that nurses who “float” outside of their typical unit will come from a specific pool of well-trained nurses, reducing unsafe floating of RNs who are not prepared to work outside their unit.
• Economic gains including an across-the-board wage increases of 14% over three years, new wage step increases for veteran nurses of 25-years and 30-years, and an increase in standby pay to $10/hour.

"I've been on the bargaining team for every one of our contracts since we joined CNA in 2002, and I believe this is the best contract we've won yet,” said Susan Johnson, RN, of St. Joseph Hospital Eureka. “We improved our staffing and floating language to make our hospital safer for patients and nurses, we improved wages and benefits significantly to recruit and retain nurses, and we worked with our sisters at PSJH hospitals across the state to become stronger united. Clearly, nurses' efforts for safer staffing are not over, but this contract gives us a great step forward."

CNA represents nearly 4000PSJHnurses and nearly 100,000 RNs throughout the state.