Back in March 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic when the CDC had issued various quarantine guidelines, WSNA filed a grievance on behalf of our members at Seattle Children’s regarding COVID exposures and the resulting mandatory quarantine. Seattle Children’s didn’t put WSNA members on paid administrative leave when they were exposed to COVID on the job, despite our clear language in Article 13.16. Article 13.16 states:

“A nurse who the Employer does not permit to work due to exposure to communicable disease while performing their job at the Employer's facilities shall be placed in paid leave status with no loss of pay or accrued time off until the Employer permits the nurse to return to work.”

An arbitration is scheduled for this week on this matter. We are in discussions with the Hospital to see if we can resolve this issue without having to wait for an arbitrator’s decision. You can help with this: If you were directed by Children’s to stay home and were required to use vacation time, sick time, weren’t paid at all, or were paid less (because, for example, you received partial payment for worker’s comp but nothing else) since March 1, 2020, please click to fill out the form indicating the amount of hours you believe you lost or had to use from your accrued banks. Right now, we’re trying to get a general sense of how widespread of an issue this is so please respond with your best estimate. Down the road, we will be asking you for a precise (or as precise as you can swear to be) number of hours lost. Please do this as soon as possible but no later than October 31, 2022.

Using the form below, please indicate the amount of vacation time, sick time, time lost without pay, or time paid at a lower rate of pay due to the Hospital not allowing you to work because of an exposure to a communicable disease on the job since March of 2020.