More details revealed on new BMH nurses contract
More details have been revealed on the three-year contract ratified on Monday night, May 12, between the unionized nurses of Butler Memorial Hospital and Independence Health System.
The major focus of the nurses’ efforts, according to Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, was in improving workplace safety and preventing workplace violence, which was the subject of an informational picket and rally in late March.
For its part, an Independence Health System representative expressed the organization was glad to have the agreement in place.
“We are pleased to announce that the proposed contract between Independence Health System’s Butler Memorial Hospital and the PASNAP nurses’ union has been ratified by union members,” said Melissa Forster, marketing and communications specialist for Independence Health System. “This agreement reflects our shared commitment to supporting our nurses and ensuring expert care, here, for our patients and community.”
Some key wins for the nurses’ union in terms of workplace safety include placing at least one new metal detector in the hospital and an additional security guard in the emergency department.
“We have less chance of weapons and less chance of another UPMC York, which is wonderful,” said Tammy May, intensive care nurse at BMH and president of the union’s local chapter.
In addition, if a nurse has to spend time away from work due to workplace violence, it will not have to come out of their own pocket. Under Pennsylvania worker’s compensation laws, there is a seven-day waiting period to collect benefits.
“If it injures them enough that they have to be off work, we will not have to use our own time to be off work,” May said. “The hospital will pay us for up to a week’s leave if we need it. That will basically bridge us to worker’s comp.”
May also clarified one of the key items mentioned in the initial announcement of the contract, which will discourage hospital management from making involuntary changes to nurses’ work schedules.
“We get our schedule six weeks in advance,” May said. “Before this contract, the hospital could change our schedules with only 48 hours’ notice. We got that changed to two weeks’ notice, you know, so they couldn’t call me on a Monday and say my schedule on Thursday was changing.”
Moreover, if nurses have their schedule involuntarily changed more than three times in a given year, those nurses will receive double-time pay as compensation for each changed shift after the third offense.
“If they do that more than three times a year, then every shift that happens to me, I will make double time,” May said. “It is a deterrent for them to not change schedules, to put the schedules out the way they need to be, and to, hopefully, not have to switch people’s schedules at the last minute.”
Nurses approved the new contract Monday night with an 80% vote, after reaching a tentative agreement with the hospital on Thursday, May 8. According to May, initial negotiations between the nurses and the hospital did not go smoothly.
“The hospital had come to us asking for many concessions,” May said. “They wanted to essentially gut our contract and take away any of the gains over the past several decades that we had achieved. They wanted to freeze our pension. They wanted to freeze any type of incentive for additional hours to cover staffing. They wanted to freeze all of that, and we were able to stop all of that.”
