What Hahnemann, St. Christopher's nurses got in 2-year labor deal

More than 90 percent of the 1,375 nurses at Hahnemann University Hospital and St. Christopher's Hospital for Children voted this week to approve new two-year labor contracts.

Both Philadelphia hospitals are owned by Tenet Healthcare Corp. (NYSE: THC)

The nurses are represented by the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP), which they joined earlier this year.

"The most important thing about winning our first contract is the strong day-to day-voice we will now have with the hospital administration," said Susan Bowes, a registered nurse at Hahnemann and a member of the union's negotiating committee. "We have established a channel of communication to ensure that we can properly advocate for our patients and for our co-workers."

The contracts are the first negotiated by PASNAP for the more than 3,300 nurses from five area hospitals who joined the union this year. Nurses at Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, Delaware County Memorial Hospital in Drexel Hill, and Pottstown Memorial Medical Center in Montgomery County also joined PASNAP this year as the union saw its membership swell by nearly 70 percent. Contract negotiations are ongoing at the other hospitals.

Hahnemann University Hospital officials said, in a statement, "The two-year contract was negotiated in good faith.… Throughout this process, our goal at Hahnemann has always been to provide high-quality, patient-centered care to every patient we serve."

Officials at St. Christopher's used the same wording in a statement it released.

The agreements with the Tenet hospitals include:

• The establishment of experience-based wage scales at both Hahnemann and St. Christopher's. At Hahnemann, the union and the hospital agreed to a 20-step wage scale with the top rate for the most experienced nurses rising to $51.72 in January 2017. At St. Christopher's, a new 17-step wage scale has been implemented where the top rate for nurses on the hospital's clinical ladder will be $51.50 per hour. With the new experience-based wage scales, which will rise by another 2 percent next January, wages will increase by a total of about 8 percent over the course of the two-year contract.
• Evening and night shift differentials, which will be 15 percent of nurses' wages at both facilities. The contract also has increases in the differentials for nurses assuming the charge nurse and preceptor roles.
• Improved health insurance options. Under the new contract, nurses will be offered up to four different options, without steep co-payment requirements for seeking care at hospitals other than Hahnemann or St. Christopher's, and will be charged "significantly" less on a bi-weekly basis for three of the four new plan options.
• The creation of a joint committee of union and management nurses, who will closely examine incidents of improper nurse reassignments if they arise, as well as develop a jointly created form that nurses will fill out if they believe their patient assignment is potentially unsafe for their patients.
• Improvements in the leave of absence policy that would permit nurses to retain employee status at the hospitals significantly beyond the 12 weeks provided for in the Family and Medical Leave Act.

"The nurses have won improvements in some areas that have taken other local unions six to eight years to win," said Bill Cruice, PASNAP's executive director and lead negotiator for both new contracts. And at a time when the area is facing another nursing shortage in the labor market, these improvements will certainly benefit the hospital's ability to recruit and retain a sufficient nursing staff.”

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal