Nurses at St. Joseph Medical Center in Eureka and Redwood Memorial Hospital in Fortuna have voted overwhelmingly to approve their contracts in Thursday voting—the Redwood agreement being a first contract—CNA announced today.

"Eureka nurses truly believe this is our best contact since we joined CNA almost 15 years ago. We made major improvements in our staffing and floating language, which will make our hospital safer for patients and nurses,” said Susan Johnson, RN. “We’ve also made major economic gains that will make it easier to keep great nurses here in Humboldt county.”

"Redwood Nurses are thrilled to have voted to approve our first contract,” said Redwood Memorial RN Linda Gelphman. “Since joining CNA last August, our nurse negotiation team has been working hard to bargain a contract to provide safe staffing as well as wages and benefits to recruit and retain the best nurses to our community hospital. We achieved that goal and we are honored that our nurses have voted to approve this agreement."

St. Joseph Eureka and Redwood Memorial join fellow Providence St. Joseph Health (PSJH) hospitals Queen of the Valley in Napa and St. Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley—which ratified their contracts in voting earlier this week.

Key features in the tentative pacts for all Providence St. Joseph Hospitals voting this week 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 of the St. Joseph Eureka and Redwood Memorial contracts include:

Redwood Memorial, first contract:

• 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.

St. Joseph Eureka nurses:

• 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.

CNA represents nearly 4000 PSJH nurses and nearly 100,000 RNs statewide.