Providence St. Peter RNs Making Strides, But Challenges Remain
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On Wednesday, August 6, our UFCW 3000 bargaining team, representing registered nurses at Providence St. Peter Hospital, met with management to continue contract negotiations.
The session began with management presenting a comprehensive counter-offer covering all outstanding proposals, finally giving us a full view of where they stand. While their offer lacked meaningful movement, it did create space for productive dialogue throughout the day.
We made progress in several areas, but significant challenges remain.
Progress Made:
Parking Lot Safety: Tentative agreement that gives no less than $25,000 to the Workplace Safety Committee to identify and implement improvements to parking lot safety.
Union Stewards: Tentative agreement ensuring that if an RN requests a Union Steward for an unplanned investigatory meeting, the steward will be paid if pulled from their work. This increases access to union representation during an investigatory meeting.
Progress on Scheduling: We are very close to agreement on a 6-week schedule process for all RNs along with improvements to our Annual Leave request process, giving RNs more time and flexibility to request time off.
Challenges Remain:
Wages: Although the employer has agreed to remove all ghost steps (years with no increase) from the wage scale, their proposal still places our wages below the upcoming RN wage scale at VMFH St. Joseph Medical Center, set to take effect in November.
Staffing: The employer has REJECTED all of our staffing proposals. Instead, they are offering to update committee language to align with current law and practice at the hospital. However, when asked if this would change any current practices, their response was probably not. While our team is not opposed to updating the language, it does nothing to address the real staffing problems nurses face on the floor every day.
Healthcare and Retirement Benefits: Perhaps most frustratingly, the employer continues to REJECT our healthcare and retirement proposals outright, offering no counterproposals, no dialogue, and no path forward. On top of that, they have failed to provide the critical information we’ve repeatedly requested regarding our current healthcare plan.
Our team has proposed establishing a Union Taft-Hartley healthcare trust, which would give workers real control over their benefits. We’ve partnered with professional actuaries and ERISA attorneys to develop the structure, model the costs, and draft the necessary legal framework. But in order to move forward, we need detailed plan data, including claims information, to accurately cost and finalize the proposal. Without it, we’re negotiating in the dark.
Providence is legally obligated to provide this data, but their excuses for withholding it are inadequate. At this point, we believe they have violated the law and are committing an unfair labor practice, frustrating the bargaining process. Their failure to comply has stalled progress on healthcare at the table and undermined our ability to bargain over healthcare in a meaningful way.
We return to the bargaining table with management for back-to-back sessions on August 25 and 26. Despite our frustrations, we remain hopeful that the upcoming sessions will bring meaningful progress toward reaching a fair agreement.
“Our Union Bargaining Team is working hard to find a path to an agreement. We made some progress today, but we’re still far apart on several critical issues. It was encouraging to have our UFCW 3000 Leadership team at the table to help work through some of these challenges!”-Jacob Kostecka, RN
Contract Action Team Meetings
Thursday, August 7 from 8PM – 9PM >>
Washington State Labor Council, 906 Columbia St SW, Olympia 98501
Thursday, August 21 from 8PM – 9PM >>
Washington State Labor Council, 906 Columbia St SW, Olympia 98501
Sign the strike pledge card: We need to show Providence we’re ready to do what it takes to get what we deserve. Sign the strike pledge card or ask a fellow member to sign it if they haven’t already.
Step up! We need department leaders to keep members engaged in the fight. ufcw3000.org/providence-united
Organize, organize, organize: Know a worker who wants to join the union? ufcw3000.org/need-a-union-info
