REPORT: June 2006

HHC nurses win new contract, on their terms

Three-year delay proves need for Taylor Law reform

by Mark Genovese

The largest single bargaining unit of registered nurses in the nation has won its fight against City Hall.

The 6,400 RNs of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and mayoral agencies overwhelmingly approved a new 59-month contract on May 22 that doesn’t include the dramatic givebacks surrendered by other city employee unions. The contract runs from Jan. 1, 2003 to Nov. 30, 2007.

For more than three years, NYSNA maintained that the pattern the city tried to impose during contract negotiations – low salary increases for veteran employees, reduced starting salaries for new hires, and extensive givebacks – wouldn’t meet the unique needs of the city’s registered nurse workforce.

NYSNA conducts extensive outreach campaign

The nurses held several public events in late 2005 and early 2006 targeted to coincide with dates of contract negotiations:

• In October, NYSNA issued a report on chronic RN understaffing throughout the city’s public hospitals, based on the Protest of Assignment forms submitted by members. This report was presented to the media at a press conference.
• This was followed up by confronting Mayor Michael Bloomberg at several public appearances, holding NYSNA’s largest rally ever in front of City Hall, delivering a giant Protest of Assignment form signed by the nurses to the mayor’s office, and a City Council “lobby day.”
• Nurses conducted campaigns to phone, fax, and mail protests over working conditions directly to the mayor.
• These events received widespread coverage in the region’s major newspapers, and radio and television stations. This was supplemented by advertising in the metropolitan area’s daily papers, Crain’s New York Business, and the Chief-Leader, a weekly that covers public-employee issues. NYSNA also purchased time in late March and early April on a video billboard in Times Square.

But most important, city nurses were tough at the bargaining table.

In February, NYSNA filed a declaration of impasse with the city’s Office of Collective Bargaining (OCB). OCB officials asked the two parties to meet one more time on May 9 before it would consider convening an impasse panel. During the early morning hours of May 10, they reached an agreement.

Terms of the new contract

• City RNs will receive retroactive wage increases of 3% effective March 16, 2004, and 2% effective Jan. 1, 2005. They will earn wage increases of 3.28% on July 1, 2006, and 3.68% on Oct. 1, 2006, for a compounded net increase of 12.5%.
• Base salaries for RNs will increase from $54,691 to $61,527 on Oct. 1, 2006, making them more competitive with RN salaries at private-sector hospitals.
• All current employees and all employees who retired during the term of the agreement will receive retroactive pay, some as much as $7,600.
• No givebacks of paid time off for current employees in vacation and sick time accruals; three holidays will be converted to personal leave days, but the net amount of holidays and personal days remains at 11 per year.
• No reductions in health, pension and retiree health benefits.
• NYSNA was one of the few city unions that did not agree to lower starting salaries for new hires, or for increased work hours, extra shifts, or fewer leave days for current employees. All vacation and sick time accruals were preserved as well.
• NYSNA did agree to minor reductions in vacation accruals for new hires, convert the uniform allowance into the base salary, and change RNs’ annual step increases from their anniversary dates to Jan. 1.

“City nurses deserved a raise much higher than 12.5%,” said Nancy Kaleda, senior associate director of NYSNA’s Economic and General Welfare program. “But they were firm in their belief that preserving paid time off was a priority, so they were willing to accept a lower raise. Nurses remain the heroes of the city’s healthcare system, and NYSNA will continue to advocate and fight for them.”

Time to reform the Taylor Law

Although city nurses were able to win a better contract by holding out, it didn’t have to be this way.

“This experience has shown us how New York State’s ‘Taylor Law’ is being used to stall and delay contract negotiations in the public sector,” said Patricia Kane of Staten Island University Hospital-North, chair of the Delegate Assembly’s Legislative Committee.

The Taylor Law penalizes public employees for striking, but not employers who use stalling tactics. “Public employers have no incentive to bargain productively and efficiently and therefore an unfair advantage in contract negotiations,” Kane added. “The time for Taylor Law reform is now.”

The Delegate Assembly’s Legislative Committee is working to make sure nursing takes a lead role in shaping Taylor Law reform and is reviewing several pieces of legislation currently before state lawmakers. Solutions offered in some of the bills include paying employees interest on raises that have been delayed, and providing employees with a cost-of-living increase during protracted negotiations, calling for imposing negotiation deadlines on public employers, and assessing penalties for failing to meet those deadlines.

“We believe that through our outreach campaign, we helped city officials recognize the vital role registered nurses play in the public health system. We demonstrated that nursing professionals have their own unique issues and needs that cannot be addressed through pattern bargaining.”

— Joan Cumberbatch, Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn,
chair of NYSNA’s HHC Executive Council

“It was NYSNA’s priority to negotiate for our members a contract that they would find acceptable and would help us protect our patients. It was not our intention to settle for anything less, because that’s what our members deserve.”

— Anne Bové, president of NYSNA’s bargaining unit at Bellevue Hospital Center, Manhattan,
president of NYSNA’s Delegate Assembly

“We hope this agreement will be the first step toward rebuilding the relationship between the city administration and its registered nurse workforce, which had been put through considerable strain for more than three years. During our next round of negotiations, we hope to be able to do something more for our long-term nurses.”

— Verlia Brown, Kings County Hospital Center,
president of NYSNA