A billboard on Mifflin Avenue urges support for CMC nurses. PAMELA SUCHY / Staff Photographer
Community Medical Center’s recently unionized nurses want negotiations for their first contract to go faster, but hospital management says contract talks have been smooth and speedy.
Both sides recently shared their thoughts on the talks after nurses hung signs reading “Support CMC Nurses Protecting Patients Demanding Respect,” and the union began planning a Saturday rally at Nay Aug Park.
Neither party has set a date to finish the contract; talks remain amicable and there is no threat of a work stoppage. But the union’s 410 registered nurses are growing impatient, since negotiations began in September. They haven’t reached terms on retirement and health care benefits and other key economic points.
Exacerbating their frustrations, the nurses say the hospital has granted only small annual merit pay increases, 2 percent to 3 percent cost-of-living adjustments, in recent years.
Yet the nurses, whose union chapter was certified in August, claim their wages remain below market rates, health insurance is costly and retirement benefits are paltry.
“The nurses are reaching out to the community, so that it can hold the hospital administration accountable,” said the nurses’ negotiator, Bill Cruice, executive director of their union, the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses & Allied Professionals.
Management’s negotiator, Scranton attorney Robert Ufberg, took issue with the nurses’ claims.
“We are not going to negotiate our contract in the public realm; it’s the wrong way to go about things,” Mr. Ufberg said. “CMC’s wage and benefit package is currently very competitive. ... That doesn’t mean it’s at the highest point, or the lowest point, or that it’s where we’d like it to be when the contract is resolved.”
Negotiations aren’t dragging on, Mr. Ufberg said. The parties have held more than 20 talks in nearly six months, plus ground rules call for the sides to settle noneconomic matters before compensation and benefits terms, he added.
Meanwhile, the parties have agreed on several key noneconomic contract terms. Mr. Cruice said they include seniority protections for nurses, grievance and arbitration procedures and a discipline system.
They have negotiated bereavement and jury duty pay, personnel record policies and the maintenance of several different benefits, such as life insurance.
CMC administrators want to come to terms with the nurses, but lately management has faced many outside obstacles, Mr. Ufberg said.
First, management couldn’t just adjust wages or benefits after the union organized in March 2007 because contract talks were imminent, Mr. Ufberg said. Additionally, CMC and Moses Taylor Hospital executives are trying to “affiliate” — a deal said to be similar to a merger. The executives have been waiting a year for the state attorney general to decide on the deal.
On top of that, CMC, Scranton’s largest hospital, has struggled to right its finances in recent years. Though the hospital had positive operating income in 2007, it sustained $21.7 million in operating losses between 2001 and 2006.
“Certainly this contract is a high priority,” said John Nilsson, CMC’s interim president and CEO. “But there are also other priorities, including reinvesting in the infrastructure and technology ... meeting the needs of the other employees and (fixing) the overall financial health of the hospital.”
CMC’s longtime registered nurses say such talk misses the point, and although they are a hospital cornerstone, management has long failed to address their concerns — even after CMC stopped losing money.
For now, much is left to be negotiated in the new contract. The nurses want guaranteed staffing ratios so each nurse on certain floors never handles more than five patients. And, during staff shortages, the nurses don’t want administrators to force them to staff departments they’re not trained to work in.
The nurses also want more scheduling flexibility, higher on-call and night-shift pay rates, more vacation time for senior nurses and greater incentives to work weekends.
As for CMC’s wages versus other facilities’ compensation, Mercy Hospital didn’t respond to a Times-Tribune request for data, and Moses Taylor Hospital declined to provide information.
CMC’s registered nurses start at $19.25 per hour, or about $40,000 annually, and top out at $22.50 — $56,000 per year — according to Mr. Cruice. Wilkes-Barre General Hospital’s registered nurses begin at $23.47 an hour, or $48,817 annually, and reach at $28.39, or $59,051 per year, according to Mr. Cruice.
Registered nurses at Geisinger Wyoming Valley Hospital and Geisinger South Wilkes-Barre make $23.56 an hour to start, or $49,004 annually, according to Geisinger. Those nurses max out at $30.21 an hour, or $62,836 per year, according to Mr. Cruice.
Last updated on March 24 , 2008
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