Your team and WSNA staff are so encouraged by the participation in the survey to work together to gain a fair contract for Overlake nurses. Please read all negotiations updates from WSNA, join the private FB group for additional updates and participate in unified actions that are a call to action by your team. Your team is committed to representing the improvements that benefit the most, which is currently over 900 nurses. We are all in this together and the defined actions the nurses take are strongest and the most impactful when ALL the nurses participate. Stay tuned for virtual gatherings with team members during the course of negotiations, following March 1.

Unit rep and Contract Action Team members will be KEY to maintaining and demonstrating unified strength. Contact Zach Seikel, WSNA Organizer if you are not yet a unit rep or CAT member for more information about how you can join these efforts zseikel@wsna.org.

A special note about rights:

You are entitled to breaks and meal periods. It is the employer’s responsibility, by law, to provide the mechanism to take them. Rights which are not exercised are not much use to anyone. Missed rest breaks and meal periods are essential to document when you clock out. If it isn’t documented, it “didn’t happen,” as far as the employer can see. Let us be clear, a nurse does NOT need to check or get permission to clock no breaks. Nurses are strongly encouraged to notify the charge nurse if they are encountering barriers to getting these breaks. But make no mistake, if you miss them, clock appropriately to attest to that fact. If you miss the breaks and/or meal periods there is a reason and almost without exception it is due to staffing.  Take 2 minutes to submit an ADO so these can be used as proof of the frequency and prevalence of the staffing concerns and complaints in each department. If it takes more than 2 minutes, you are writing too much.

A nurse does not need to raise their voice to raise staffing concerns. Raise the concern with the charge nurse and/or SA, take the assignment and submit the ADO after the fact. In doing so, you’ve exercised your legal and ethical duty. That ADO could be used to protect you if there are any negative outcomes. Internal QAs cannot.  But if policy requires an OARS to be submitted, by all means do so.  Just don’t forget to do a much quicker ADO, too😊.

Nurses are to be free from retaliation for submitting ADO’s, by law. Contact your Nurse Rep Tara Barnes if you experience this, although your supervisor or manager must check in with you to prepare to address it at the staffing committee. Nurses who submit ADOs are invited and have a right to present their ADO at the staffing committee if they choose. We meet monthly on the 2^nd Wednesday at 1 p.m. in-person with a virtual option. Save this ADO link to your phone for quick and easy use: https://www.wsna.org/union/ado.

Contact your Nurse Rep at tbarnes@wsna.org or one of your local unit officers with questions.

In solidarity,

Your negotiation team and WSNA staff:
Chris Birchem Otho/Spine Surgery
Cassie Bundick CCU
Caine Ballew Float Pool
Michele Percosky OPS
Kristin Barnett IPS
Stacey Alvarez ED
Melissa Santos CCU
Balla Sarr Break Relief RN
Zach Seikel Organizer zseikel@wsna.org
Tara Barnes Nurse Representative tbarnes@wsna.org.