We met with management for our third session on Monday, Oct. 30.  Many of you showed up to support your bargaining team to observe negotiations and spoke with great emotion about how you feel about Kindred’s inadequate wage proposal. Nurses spoke passionately about how the lack of wages impact their lives and ability to remain at Kindred. Kindred heard loud and clear that it is not worth it to stay at Kindred if they are not willing to give you a fair wage increase. The wages Kindred is offering are not competitive in the greater Seattle-Tacoma area – Kindred needs to offer more than the 2% general wage increase that most nurses would receive under its proposal.  And, management needs to ensure that nurses who have spent years working for Kindred are not paid less than new hires with the same nursing experience – management’s wage proposal will continue to allow that to happen. Your negotiating team is pushing for a wage scale that would nurses receive pay increases for each year they stay at Kindred. In short, management’s proposal doesn’t close the gaps but ensures that you will continue to fall further and further behind the area market and new hires.

Your team held to our previous proposals around changes in contract language and premiums and continues to propose aggressive wage increases. We also made a new proposal to ensure that whatever bonus is offered, it can’t be changed after being accepted – if management offers $30/hour for a shift, that’s what they need to pay! We also made a new proposal to ensure that RNs are not inappropriately required to sign off on the work of LPNs.  At our next meeting on Nov. 14, we expect to receive management’s response to those proposals.

We now have a petition demanding better wages. You are worth more!  Please sign the petition. We want to send management a clear and loud message that you deserve competitive and fair compensation for the work you perform.

What can you do to support your team and advocate for a fair contract?

• Join us for bargaining, next session Tuesday, Nov. 14 tentatively set for 1 pm. Contact Sam via text or phone call for details: 425-606-7036.
• Sign and circulate the petition demanding fair wages launching. Take picture with pen in hand and send those to Sam too - 425-606-7036
• Sticker up and file an ADO, tell them in writing when your unit is not safely staffed. Please fill out an ADO every time you don’t have the staffing you need, you miss breaks or meals, etc. Here is the link to the online ADO form and more information about ADOs.  https://www.wsna.org/union/ado
• Attend or join Staffing Committee to help ensure bad, unsafe staffing plans don’t get adopted. Members of the committee must be relieved from work, and it is paid time. Please contact Sam via the number above or your Nurse Representative Sara Frey for more information or if you are turned away when trying to attend a meeting. sfrey@wsna.org

Your bargaining team - Shonsherryer Holland, Iman Zuber, Ruth Kariuki and Thandi Bilik