It's a Contract!

Nurses at Sharp HealthCare worked two years to get a union. Then they spent a year bargaining for their first contract. But what a contract!

SAN DIEGO

For Barbara Dent, RN, there is a face on the new contract she helped bargain with Sharp HealthCare. That face belongs to Nita Alcala, RN.
Alcala had worked at Sharp for 28 years when she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Following surgery, she lost her voice. As she struggled with chemotherapy and speech therapy, Alcala learned she had been terminated.

“It’s something that will never sit right with me,” says Dent, “and it fired us up even further to get some sort of protection.” Job security during a catastrophic illness is part of the new three-year contract ratified on May 22 by an 82 percent majority vote.

Most of the pact is built around the ability of Sharp’s nurses to provide quality patient care. That, after all, is the primary reason they organized Sharp Professional Nurses Network (SPNN) — part of AFSCME affiliate United Nurses Associations of California/National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees — three years ago. With over 2,200 workers in the unit, it was the largest single organizing victory among nurses under the National Labor Relations Act.

The carefully crafted organizing drive has established a model that can be used to organize nurses in hospitals and health care organizations across the country as AFSCME fights for quality patient care and quality jobs.

SLIPPING STANDARDS. “When you think about it, patients go to a hospital because they need nursing care. That’s why hospitals exist,” says Chris McGovern, RN, who was also on the bargaining committee. She and other long-time Sharp employees were saddened as they saw Sharp’s priorities change from excellence to the “bottom line.”

“We could see patient care starting to slip every year a little bit more,” says McGovern. And nurses who spoke up put their jobs on the line — because they had no protection against retaliation. With a union contract, that has changed.

“Management did not recognize the important role we play in patient care,” says Becky Motlagh, RN. “They take a two-prong view of nursing: On the one hand, they promote us to the public as providing quality patient care; on the other, nurses are not really paid attention to.”

DANGEROUS EXCLUSION. The neonatal intensive care nurse knows first-hand what happens when nurses are not included in the decision-making process. Motlagh recalls a day when new diagnostic machines were brought in: “No one had expected the change, and people didn’t know how to use them. When you have to use them on a critically ill infant, time matters.”

The nurses hope many problems in communication and staffing will be resolved by the RN Advisory Committee created by the contract. Nurses from all the Sharp facilities will be represented, and the committee will meet monthly to address professional concerns.

“We’ve set boundaries for our relationship,” says McGovern. “It became very clear that we needed a new relationship with some stability and with boundaries and clear expectations.”

TEACH ME. Judy King, RN, is very happy with the increase in educational benefits — from $300 to $500 a year. The cardiac transplant coordinator needs 20 hours of transplant education a year to maintain certification. “A major conference usually runs from $1,500 to $2,000 when you think of airfare, your expenses, your hotel.” The extra money will help.

She is particularly proud that SPNN won language guaranteeing “proper training before you get floated to another area outside your own department.” King faced a real dilemma a few years ago when Sharp tried to rotate her temporarily back to her old unit — intensive care — but refused her request for re- orientation. She decided not to risk her license. “I just took the time off without pay. I said, ‘I’m not putting myself or a patient in this situation,’” says King.

She has always thought nurses should organize, and now she has her wish. “Gee,” she said, on the day the new contract took effect, “I’ve been a union nurse for 23 months, and this is the first day that I’m actually working and have a contract.”

THAT ENDS WELL. Alcala has been reinstated to her job; she has regained her voice. And Sharp’s nurses have won theirs. As Kathy Muckley, RN, explains it, “The average nurse has not had any kind of say in what goes on at Sharp, but now we do. And Sharp has been forced to listen to us.” It’s a win-win situation for the nurses and their patients.

By Susan Ellen Holleran