Vote on two-year pact with12 percent raise slated today
Nurses at Saint Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy reached a tentative contract agreement Wednesday to receive an increase in wages and improve their retirement plan.
The nurses union, California Nurses Association, completed negotiations with the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, which runs the hospital, to improve the nurses’ retirement package and gain a 12 percent wage increase over the next two years.
Saint Louise’s 100 nurses are scheduled to vote today on the contract.
“All the terms and issues have been agreed to,” said Corinne Comer, acute care director for the CNA. “Now all the nurses will need to do is ratify the contract.”
The first pay increase will take effect immediately after the contracts are signed. After two years, a nurse with five years’ experience would earn about $33.08 an hour, while a nurse with 20 years’ experience would earn about $44.72 an hour. Most nurses do not work full time, Comer said.
The pension plan agreed upon will increase the amount of salary retained after retirement by about 16 percent. The pension is based on the number of years worked. A 65-year-old retiree who has been a nurse for 30 years will now retain 40 percent of his or her salary. In the old contract that same nurse retained 34 percent, Comer said.
“(The CNA) thinks the pension rewards the nurses for their service and begins to address the long-term problem of poor pensions in a female-dominated profession,” Comer said. “It’s a dramatic improvement in the existing benefits at that hospital.”
For many nurses, the pension benefit will increase as much as 30 percent.
Increases also were made in the amount of educational leave available to RNs.
The agreement calls for an immediate improvment of nurse staffing in the medical-surgical unit when the state’s new CNA-sponosred nurse-to-patient staffing law goes into effect.
“We worked hard to get this agreement and overall it is a good one,” said critical care nurse Marie Ames. “We came away with real pension improvement and the wage hike is important. Today’s economy conforms to community standards and puts us pretty much on the same level as other nurses in the Bay Area.”
“We feel we have made real progress with this agreement,” said intensive care nurse Donna Fischer. “Hospitals that work with the nurses to improve patient care staffing and provide better retirement benefits, which will be better able to attract and retain the staff now required to deliver safe, quality patient care.”
The new contract also will include a “patient protection” requirement preventing Saint Louise from hiring licensed vocational nurses in place of registered nurses. LVNs are certified nurses with a lower level of training than RNs. This mean a RN must be present to oversee any patient assessments or help with giving intravenous medications.
Lower registered-nurse-to-patient ratios will be implemented throughout the state in January 2004, leading some registered nurses to fear that licensed vocational nurses would be hired in their place.
The details of the contract are similar to those reached between nurses and the Catholic Healthcare West hospital chain, which owned Saint Louise until February 2002. Because CHW ran the hospital until recently, their new contract was a good indicator of where these negotiations should lead, Comer said.
“There have been historically, over the last several years, settlements that included Saint Louise,” Comer said. “CHW establishes a precedent.”
Nurses at Seton Medical Center in Daly City, also run by Daughters of Charity, are expected to agree to the new contract next week as well. The contract will expire in two years.
At that time, several other hospitals owned by Daughters of Charity, including O’Connor Hospital in San Jose, will be under contract negotiations, giving the nurses’ union more clout if it wants to ask for changes, said Comer.
