National Nurses United

NewsBriefs:Public 9/4/07 4:11 PM Page 5 Maine Nurses Strive To Strengthen Contract a negotiating team member, said that she and other nurses on her unit recently learned that a new hire, fresh out of nursing school, was making $5 more per hour than they were, in addition to the $5,000 signing bonuses new hires typically receive. "My coworker that was orienting her was so mad," said Raines. "It's just not fair." Now Los Gatos, like all other hospitals in the agreement, will have salary steps to ensure equitable treatment. RNs will receive four percent across-the-board wage increases each year, and additional percentages will be available to be applied toward establishing the salary steps. The other important provisions that Tenet nurses won were an agreement by the chain that it will not try to exclude nurses from union representation by claiming they are "supervisors" under the so-called Kentucky River and Oakwood rulings, safer floating and lifting policies, and provisions to ensure that new hospital technologies will not erode RN judgment. Nurses were also successful in maintaining all their healthcare and retirement benefits at a time when other bargaining nurses are facing huge takeaways. "I'm just really happy that we came to an agreement," said Stoddard. This contract "will help keep and bring nurses to the bedside." The nine hospitals covered by the new contract include: Los Alamitos Medical Center near Los Angeles; Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs; Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo; Twin Cities Community Hospital in the Central Coast city of Templeton; Community Hospital of Los Gatos; San Ramon Regional Medical Center; USC University Hospital in Los Angeles; Doctors Medical Center in Modesto; and USC Norris Cancer Center in Los Angeles. —staff report SEPTEMBER 2007 ere's a typical example of how the current staffing committees at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor don't work: The nurses in the main operating room have known since February that they'd be desperately short staffed on the night shift starting September, what with one vacancy in the unit already, a nurse scheduled long in advance for a three-week vacation, and another about to leave. Nurses in the OR committee had been clamoring since spring to hire more staff, but the department head either failed to pass on the message or argue the case properly to the director of nursing. The result? Staffing is in crisis, and management is talking about forcing day shift nurses to cover the night shift, and also making people work more overtime. "What's happened is managers have all taken over these committees," said Judy Brown, an RN working in the EMMC OR's preanesthesia unit and local union president. "People didn't even go to the last meeting because they felt they weren't being heard, so what's the point? We'd really like to see the California model of [professional practice committees] here, made up of just staff nurses, where we have more say." Establishing real, functioning PPCs is one of the top goals for some 840 EMMC RNs bargaining their first contract after the affiliation of Maine State Nurses Association with CNA/ NNOC. Brown explained that their contract, which expires at the end of September, was still largely based on the American Nurses Association template, and that this was their opportunity to upgrade their agreement by adopting CNA/NNOC model contract language. "After our contract committee developed what we wanted, we thought, 'Why reinvent the wheel?' Let's base it on successful language that we know has worked," said Brown. H In addition to PPCs, the RNs are aiming for other patient care protections such as having a formal staffing system based on acuity, explicit standards of competent performance, and provisions ensuring nurses have input into the implementation of new hospital technologies. Earlier this year, EMMC rolled out Logicare, a software program for documentation of patient teaching. Problem is, says nurses, Logicare doesn't talk to their Cerner electronic charting program and has other glitches. Brown said that on five separate occasions with a patient of hers, Logicare did not list the patient on screen, and would not let her add the patient. Using the program was slowing her down so much that she finally gave up and documented on paper. Of course, improving salaries and benefits is also a major goal. Like nurses across the country, EMMC RNs have seen their healthcare premiums rise while benefits are cut. Nancy Ford, a cardiac telemetry RN who is one of the nurse negotiators, said that she now pays about $340 a month just to cover herself and her husband and had to switch to an option with a higher deductible just to keep premiums at that level. Brown echoed Ford's situation, saying that her and her husband's premiums (he also works for EMMC) recently doubled from about $140 a month to $300 a month to cover their family. She had been working part time for almost 17 years in order to stay home with the kids, but recently returned to full time to afford the extra healthcare expense. What's more, their Cigna plan no longer covers eyeglasses. "My patients better hope I don't need new glasses," she half joked. "My husband does need new glasses, but I'm putting him off for now." —staff report MAINE W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G REGISTERED NURSE 5

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