News Update: January 10, 2020 – 8:00 AM
Contact: Tom Geiger, UFCW 21: 206-604-3421

UFCW 21 RNs at St Mary’s, St Peters and Centralia Reach Tentative Agreements Early This Morning

This morning we are announcing that over the night, UFCW 21 RNs from St Mary’s in Walla Walla and then our RNs at St Peters from Olympia and Centralia all reached Tentative Agreements.

Just over one week ago 13,000 nurses and health care workers at UFCW 21, SEIU Healthcare 1199 NW and WSNA were all prepared to begin the final 10-day countdown for a large-scale strike at Providence for patient care and safety. A January 2nd joint bargaining session with all three unions and the employer resulted in the first significant progress in months and that breakthrough led to the postponing of the strike notice. This week started with a Tentative Agreement (TA) being reached by RNs from WSNA at Sacred Heart. Within 24 hours UFCW 21 service and maintenance workers at Sacred Heart also reached a TA, followed another 24 hours later by TAs with service and maintenance workers at Holy Family and two more bargaining units (Professional and Technical workers) at Providence Medical Center in Everett.

These TAs represent advances for patient care and safety and improvement of workplace conditions and they have been made possible by the unity of SEIU Healthcare 1199 NW, WSNA and UFCW 21. These three unions represent over 13,000 health care workers and nurses at 13 facilities across the state in this current round of negotiations with Providence.

At the timing of this release, ongoing intensive negotiations are taking place today with SEIU healthcare 1199 NW and Providence and it is hoped that a tentative agreement will be reached there soon.