Local 5138 Bargaining Update May 5, 2020

Today was day 5 of negotiations.

In preparation for both parties’ proposals on wages, including a market rate adjustment, HMH is sending you a survey to capture your years of experience as an RN, including any international RN experience. HMH says that they do not have records of our years of experience. We have reviewed the survey and encourage everyone to fill it out as soon as possible.

Today, we made detailed proposals on staffing:

• More resource nurses at both facilities
• Staffing ratios for every unit at both facilities
• Restrictions on the use of Agency staff

Meanwhile HMH proposed 920 hour cap for per diem nurses. We have seen this before. They were not able to answer our questions last time and ultimately withdrew the proposal. Let’s make sure that happens again.

Let your managers know what we want in these negotiations. We want well-staffed hospitals including all the essential ancillary staff. We don’t want nurses floated and we don’t want nurses doing other people’s job in the hospital. The Employer wants us to be in a constant state of crisis. That is unsafe for workers and for patients.