HAVE YOU SIGNED THE PETITION YET? We have gotten a great response, but we need every single nurse to sign it! If you haven't signed the petition, please do so as soon as possible. It is critical that we show Sacred Heart that the ENTIRE bargaining unit has the back of the negotiating team.

Our next day of bargaining is Dec. 19!

The deadline for signing petitions has been extended. Sign the petition NOW if you haven’t done so already to show management that we are ONE.

WSNA/Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center, Negotiation UPDATE

Day #5 of negotiations is complete. We began with a moment of silence for Doug Brant, RN from Providence VNA who was tragically murdered on the job the previous week. Our silence was to honor Doug and his service, but to also highlight awareness of workplace violence and the need for collaborative reform.

In addition, your negotiating team brought in our WSNA Strategic Researcher, who gave a presentation on the challenges and opportunities that Sacred Heart faces. We demonstrated that Sacred Heart’s high turnover rate causes it to spend a lot of money on recruiting and training a revolving door of nurses who do not stick around. Furthermore, its heavy reliance on overtime and travel nurses is an expensive Band-Aid measures that does nothing to cure the underlying problem. We demonstrated how a serious investment in nursing wages is the pathway for better staffing and better service to our community. Providence is a huge organization and has the resources to do right by its nurses and its community.

Sacred Heart made an increase in its wage proposal to just under 10% in the first year, 3% in the second year and 2.75% in the third year. It needs to do more to help with recruitment and retention.

In addition to discussing wages and other compensation, we continued to press Sacred Heart to improve the functioning of the Workplace Violence Committee and have a meaningful, transparent process for addressing workplace violence complaints and for responding to nurses who file complaints.

We also pressed Sacred Heart on the issue of floating. We know that floating is a dissatisfier and that a well-staffed float pool is an invaluable resource that can help reduce floating by nurses who are not in the float pool. It is common for hospitals to incentivize nurses to become float pool nurses by paying an hourly float pool premium. However, Sacred Heart has stubbornly resisted this well-accepted approach. On a related subject, we did secure a tentative agreement that requires Sacred Heart to make reasonable efforts not to float preceptors when they have an active preceptor assignment.

We have also heard your concerns about the compensation for charge nurses and the frequency with which they take patient loads, which hinders their ability to function in the charge nurse role. We are pressing for a significant charge nurse premium increase and a way to reduce the frequency with which they take patient loads.

Thank you to Birthplace for feeding us on day #5! Your efforts allow us to have a working lunch and continue our important work for our nurses!

Questions? Contact WSNA Nurse Representative Jaclyn Smedley, BSN, RN at jsmedley@wsna.org.