Mason General Hospital RN Bargaining Update
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On Monday, April 27, we joined management for our third session of RN union contract negotiations at Mason General Hospital.
To cut to the chase: we got Management’s initial economic proposal in the late afternoon- and it signified a pretty big leap forward in these early negotiations.
Because we are still in negotiations (and both us and the Employer have a fair number of proposals still on the table) we cannot necessarily share specific numbers- however, we were left feeling highly optimistic about management’s initial wage scale offer, which was structured pretty closely to what wages nurses are earning are in the Olympia region.
Our team got to work right away and began evaluating where this would leave Mason RN’s wages at the end of our three-year contract in comparison to these other hospitals- but we also had a number of other proposals to evaluate and discuss as management’s wage scale proposal was part of a “package” offer (which is not uncommon and used by both the Union and Employer throughout negotiations)- meaning the proposal must be accepted or rejected in its entirety.
Management’s package offer also included proposals on:
Increases to various premiums & differentials (for instance: Charge RN, Cross-Trained, On-Call, etc!)
Changes to the way longevity (anniversary) steps will be calculated for all RNs
Modifications to the pay-in-lieu-of-benefits differential,
And many more!
We spent the remainder of our evening discussing and weighing out everything on the table from both parties- we did not yet formally get a response to the Employer, we agreed it was best to spend our time looking everything over & getting a comprehensive response back at our next session, which is scheduled for May 14!
Our union bargaining team: Nancy Ownby, RN; Megan Corbin, RN; Tori Willis, RN
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