Santa Fe Mayor Helps Broker Christus, Nurses Deal By Patrick Malone The New Mexican Just as negotiations between Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center and the union that represents its nurses and support staff seemed to be nearly settled last week, the hospital made an offer that nurses say set back the talks and threatened to prolong the labor dispute. With the best hope for resolution seemingly slipping away, leaders of New Mexico District 1199 of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees appealed to Santa Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales to press the hospital to tweak its offer. “We thought we had it nailed, then the proposal that came back from the hospital had a couple of poison pills in it,” Fonda Osborn, the union’s lead negotiator, said. “We met with the mayor at his office on Sunday and told him that we thought we were close, but found out we were miles apart again. We laid out our concerns for him, and we know he placed some calls outlining our concerns with management.” Three days later, on Wednesday, the union and the hospital announced that they had reached a tentative agreement on a new contract that establishes a minimum staffing level, the most contentious issue in the negotiation. The volley of phone calls between Gonzales and representatives of both sides continued up to the hours preceding the announcement that an agreement had been reached, even as the mayor traveled to a conference out of state, a city spokesman confirmed. “I’m just glad our community hospital and our hard-working health care workers can get back to doing what they do best,” the mayor said. “When we all sit down at the table and stay committed to working together we can solve even the toughest problems.” With union negotiators and hospital officials both urging union members to adopt the pact when it faces a vote on Saturday, months of heated exchanges between the two sides look to be nearing an end. Twice before, the union’s membership has overwhelmingly rejected the hospital’s offers, but neither included firm minimum staffing levels and before both votes, the union’s negotiating team condemned the hospital’s offers. The contract between the hospital and union that represents about 500 employees expired July 31. A brief strike threat from the union gave way to two months of picketing outside the hospital, which braced for a possible work stoppage by advertising nationally for replacement nurses who stood to make up to $6,000 per week if they were willing to cross the picket line. New details of the offer emerged Thursday in an email St. Vincent sent to employees. It represents a compromise on staffing with the hospital’s commitment to staff every shift at a level comparable to at least 40 percent of similar hospitals. Otherwise, the hospital faces fines of up to $900 per day, which would go into a fund that pays for nurses’ continuing education. The union had sought a commitment to staffing equivalent to half of similar hospitals, while the hospital favored keeping a staffing requirement out of the contract. The hospital’s leaders have maintained that patient results have been steadily improving in recent years, and they expressed doubt that beefing up nurse staffing would further improve that measure. Nurses said they worried that low staffing threatened the quality of care for patients and led to high turnover of nurses. If approved, the contract would change the way the hospital measures staffing from a cumulative count to a strict shift-by-shift tally. Osborn explained what that would mean in practical terms. “It’s going to lend a great deal of stability to the floors,” she said. “The nurses won’t be coming into work in the morning and finding out that they’re short-staffed, or that they’re being pulled from an adequately staffed unit to an understaffed unit, which still leaves one of the units short in the end.” Additionally, the hospital’s offer gives nurses and technicians a new platform to express patient-care and staffing concerns and seek solutions. The proposal calls for a three-year contract that would give nurses and medical technicians a 2 percent raise beginning this month, and a 1.5 percent increase each of the next two years. Up to 1.5 percent more could be earned in each of the next two years through incentive pay tied to patient satisfaction, and the hospital can award discretionary bonuses of 0.5 percent each of the next two years. “Our goal was always to bargain in good faith and to reach an agreement with [the union],” Arturo Delgado, a spokesman for the hospital, said. “We met with Mayor Javier Gonzales on a few occasions during this process and we are grateful for his ongoing support of Christus St. Vincent and health care in our community.” Gonzales first interceded in the labor dispute weeks ago. He began nudging both sides to hold in-person talks when they seemed farthest apart and hospital administrators had declared that they were done with face-to-face discussions. “I think it would have taken a lot longer to get this settled if the mayor hadn’t put out the call to all the parties to come to the table,” Osborn said. She said resolving the long-disputed contract will not end the union’s push for statewide staffing guidelines. It has plans to press a local health care study group to review the issue, and plans to advocate for a change in the law that would require statewide reporting of nurse staffing levels, if not a mandatory staffing minimum. Contact Patrick Malone at 986-3017 or pmalone@sfnewmexican. Follow him on Twitter @pmalonenm.
Posted on: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 11:51:20 +0000
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