Your fellow nurses on your WSNA negotiating team just completed the seventh and eighth day of negotiations with PVNA. At the start of the first day, we read to management our petition demanding that PVNA do right by its nurses and right by the community we serve.  We presented them signatures of over 1,000 community members, demanding that PVNA provide its nurses with safe working conditions and increased compensation so that we can retain and recruit the nurses that we need to serve our community.

WSNA continues to propose wages that will help PVNA solve its chronic, massive recruitment problem.  WSNA is proposing a 15% increase in the first year, then 4.75% in the second year, and 4.25% in the third year to help address the large pay gap between nurses’ wages at PVNA and those of nurses at other Providence facilities in the area.  Providence St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Medical Center and WSNA recently reached a tentative agreement securing a 13.5% wage increase upon ratification, and Holy Family nurses received a 13.5% wage increase in the first year of their contract.  Despite the sizeable wage increases that other nurses are receiving in this market, PVNA is insisting on an inadequate and non-competitive wage increases of  6% at ratification and 3% in Oct 2025, and 3% in Oct 2026.  This will serve only to widen the wage gap and exacerbate the recruitment and retention crisis.

Just yesterday, Providence proposed to CUT WAGES for some nurses.  That’s right.  It has proposed to stop paying nurses who are Wound Treatment Associate – Certified  (WTA-C) the 2.5% wage premium that they currently receive, saying that they don’t see the “value” that the certification brings.

Is it just a coincidence that PVNA wants to keep wages depressed at the same time that it seeks to enter into a joint  venture with a FOR-PROFIT private-equity entity for its home health and hospice services? That’s right, they have decided that they want to transform providing health care to the most vulnerable members of our community into a profit-seeking venture.  As this study has shown, when for-profits take over home care, costs go up and the quality of care goes down.

 A 2023 report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research found, after studying the effects of private equity firms seeking profits from providing hospice services, that “a focus on profit maximization leads, on average, to fewer visits to hospice patients, inappropriate use of lower-skilled staff to care for patients, and recruitment of patients who are ineligible for hospice care and thus lose access to curative or emergency care. Unleashing incentives for profit maximization have not led to better outcomes for patients and families but rather, in many cases, quite the opposite.”

Please note that the joint venture, which expects to begin operations sometime in 2025, still needs to go through the regulatory approval process. WSNA will do all that we can to make sure the voices of our nurses and the voices of the community we serve are heard in this process.

What does this mean for the short term?  First, WSNA will continue to bargain with PVNA for a new contract. Second, the joint venture, if it is approved, intends to continue to recognize WSNA as your bargaining unit representative and intends to continue to employ everyone in the WSNA bargaining unit.  Third, the joint venture intends to assume the contract between WSNA and PVNA, with limited exceptions that it must bargain over with WSNA when, and if, the joint venture goes through.

WSNA has made the joint venture a high priority, and we will stay on top of it as we move forward.

Our work is never done! The community petition was a success, and we must continue to show management we are strong, and united.

Please come to the next local unit meeting to receive updates on day 7 and 8, as well as discuss the joint venture in more detail.

Local Unit meeting information

at Donni Heidenson’ s House, Nov 4, 2024
9615 E North Rim Ln
Meeting will start promptly at 5:30pm. Dinner will be provided.

Questions/ Concerns : Contact Kitt Ruchert, WSNA Nurse Représentative, kruchert@wsna.org