NORTH PROVIDENCE -- Nurses at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital voted
yesterday to accept a new three-year contract in a near-unanimous
landslide.
Of the 202 nurses who voted during three sessions throughout the day,
only 5 cast votes against the contract.
The vote ended a period of tension which began on July 17, when the
previous contract expired and union members voted -- also
near-unanimously -- to authorize their leaders to issue a 10-day strike
notice if they deemed it necessary.
But the strike notice never came, and yesterday evening both sides said
they were pleased with the compromises hammered out in negotiations.
"It was a fair agreement," said R. Otis Brown, a hospital spokesman.
"We're pleased we could reach an agreement and move on."
"We had good compromises," agreed union president Lynn Blais.
The new contract will give nurses a 10-percent raise over the next three
years: 4 percent the first year, and 3 percent in the next two years.
It's one of the features Blais liked the most. "The wages kept us where
we needed to go to be competitive in the market," she said.
The negotiators also resolved one of the most controversial issues --
health care -- by allowing nurses to keep their current HealthMate Coast
to Coast plan while giving them the option of choosing a cheaper Blue
CHiP plan. The hospital had originally wanted to switch the HealthMate
plan with the Blue CHiP one.
Another contentious issue, however, went unresolved. During
negotiations, union representatives had called for minimum staffing
ratios as a way of ensuring the quality of care at Fatima.
The issue was not addressed directly in the new contract, Blais and
Brown said.
They had slightly different explanations. Brown said other issues took
precedence for the union. "They talked about it a lot publicly," he
said. "It was discussed a lot at the bargaining table. But in the end
wages and health insurance were the critical issues."
Blais said that other language about staffing in the contract made
minimum staffing ratios less necessary. The contract establishes a
committee to deal with staffing issues and concerns, she said. It also
creates a "float pool" of nurses who can fill in at any understaffed
department.
Other appealing features of the contract, she said, were the
establishment of an orientation program and testing for new nurses, and
an incentive program for nurses graduating from the hospital's nursing
school to pay off their tuition if they take a job at the hospital.
While both sides were satisfied, Chris Callaci -- a lead negotiator on
the union's side -- said he believed authorizing the 10-day strike
notice was a helpful move toward settling negotiations.
"There's no question that that creates an environment where the parties
are engaged in a much more serious way, because there's an increase in
the likelihood of crisis," he said. "We're not frivolous about that
stuff -- we did everything we could to make sure we didn't issue the
notice."
But, he added, "The idea that we might issue [it] certainly creates an
environment to settle."
