The ratification vote for your new 2024-2026 Collective Bargaining Agreement will be held on September 11 from 11 am to 2:30 pm in Conference Room 304 at the Snohomish County Health Department building.

Please join us to review the proposed contract and get all your questions answered before you cast your vote. We will have copies of the contract for you to read at the vote so please set aside some extra time so you may have a chance to read through the changes.

Summary of changes:

After months of hard work, your negotiation team has reached a Tentative Agreement with the County for your new contract at the Snohomish County Health Department! It was a long and drawn-out bargaining that required a careful merging of the shortened interim contract from 2023 and the longer, more mature contract from 2021-2022, while also adjusting the old Health District language to conform with the new County language and better align with other County contracts and code.

Current Wages

Your wages will increase by 4.51% starting retroactively to January 1st, 2024, when the interim contract expired. A huge win for WSNA was eliminating step 1 on the pay scale while adding a new top step (either a new step 7 or a new step 10, depending on the scale you are on). This increases the wage of a new hire coming in at step 1 while also allowing members who have capped out at the top step to advance to a new, higher step. Everyone's step label will shift down one step but you will remain at the same salary plus the 4.51% increase in your wages. For example: if you reached step 5 in 2023, then retroactively on January 1st, 2024 you will be placed on step 4 but will be paid the 2023 step 5 wages plus a 4.51% raise. The change in your step label does not mean that you will be receiving a lower salary! You will then advance to your new next step on your anniversary date. If you have already passed your anniversary date in 2024, your pay will be increased retroactively to the new step's rate on that date. We have been advised by the County that their process for calculating and disbursing retro pay may take a couple months, so we will keep you all posted on the timeline if the contract is ratified.

Future Wages

Why 4.51%? That percentage reflects the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for Seattle-Bellevue-Tacoma from June 2022 to June 2023. We want to ensure that annual wage increases match up with the wildly variable economic state that we have experienced over the last few years. The County is moving across the board to raises that are synced with the CPI generated by the Federal Government, which is a great indicator of how real expenses are affecting the general public. Rather than gambling on trying to predict what the next two years will hold in store for us, we will use the CPI to determine what your raises will be in 2025 and 2026, with a floor of 1% and going up to 5%. CPI has been, on average, around 5% for the last four years. For more information on CPI from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, go to https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/consumerpriceindex_seattle.htm.

Non-Discrimination

Your negotiation team fought hard to keep the Non-Discrimination clause that has been a vital protection for employees for many years. The County wanted to remove the clause entirely at first. When challenged, they demanded that it be excluded from the grievance process. The team continued to push to keep effective routes for addressing employer discrimination in our contract, so the clause was eventually allowed to stand. It will not be subject to arbitration, but discrimination complaints can proceed through the grievance process, including our newly added mediation step to be presented to a third party.

Grievance Process

To better facilitate trauma-informed practices when it comes to workplace issues, your team fought to keep the grievance timeline at 21 days versus the two weeks proposed by the County. This is intended to give the affected members sufficient time to process a potential grievance before they are required to file it. We have also added the option of using mediation to resolve grievances in a more timely and collaborative manner, allowing us to utilize a third-party impartial mediator. The County agreed to make the first step of the grievance process—verbally addressing the grievance directly to your supervisor—optional. This means that you may choose to escalate an issue directly to the next level in the chain of command via the grievance process if you do not feel comfortable or safe discussing it with your direct supervisor.

On-Call Pay and Weekends

Nurses who are assigned to be part of the weekly on-call cycle will now receive one hour's salary for each day they are on call (formerly it was a flat rate of $25), and that rate doubles for any weekend days and holidays during which a nurse is on-call. We also fought to add protections that ensure that a nurse cannot be required to work weekends as part of their regularly scheduled work days.

Questions or Concerns?

Please reach out to your nurse rep, Grace Chesterman (gchesterman@wsna.org) if you would like clarification on any aspects of this summary, or you may discuss your concerns at the ratification vote with your rep and your local unit officers.

Your negotiation team,

Susan Babcock
Sue Starr