Highline Medical Center: Contract unanimously ratified!

After two months of negotiating using the innovative Interest Based Bargaining process, SEIU Healthcare 1199NW members unanimously approved our new three year contract. This contract makes some major breakthroughs and raises standards for healthcare workers in Washington State.

Maintaining Affordable Family Healthcare Coverage
Maintaining our healthcare benefits was one of our top priorities in negotiations. While we will have a slight increase in our co-pays starting next year, full time employees will continue to have zero premium share for their families. We appreciate management recognizing the important role healthcare benefits have in recruitment and retention of staff.
Bargaining Breakthroughs
At our statewide Delegate Assembly in January, our members established our union-wide bargaining goals. We at Highline were able to make great progress toward achieving these objectives.
Our Major Breakthroughs Include:
 Fair wages that recruit and retain healthcare workers. For the first time, service workers will receive a 4% raise and our nurse wages will continue to be close to the highest in the area. LPNs, CNAs and Unit Secretaries were considerably behind community standard wages. They will receive an additional increase to help bring them in line with other area hospitals.
 Training for all. Our new multi-employer training fund is a first for Washington State. This fund will provide career counseling services, tutoring and tuition vouchers for workers who want to move up the healthcare career ladder. RNs will be able to access this fund for certification exams, get their BSNs or Masters to teach nursing.
 Stronger subcontracting protections. It is essential we protect our jobs in these uncertain economic times. Although HLMC has no plans to subcontract any of our work at this time, our new language states management would have to give us at least 180 day written notice if they are considering outsourcing any of our work. This would give us the opportunity to meet and discuss reasonable alternatives and/or preferential hiring options with a new employer.
 Implementation of new staffing law. Nursing staff will now have a stronger voice in creating the staffing plans for each hospital.
In addition, our new contract also includes:
 Improvements in working conditions for those having to work excessive on-call
 Even application of employer policies between units
 Improved timelines for vacation requests
 Expanding our RN float pool and creation of a CNA float pool to help reduce our dependence on agency staff and overtime for patient care needs.
We won wage breakthroughs:
 Service workers won wage increases of 4% for the first time. RN wages will continue to match Swedish nurse wages – among the highest in the area
 RNs will now have a new 30 year step
 LPNs, CNAs and Unit Secretaries will get an additional “bump” that will bring them closer to community standards for recruitment and retention
 No delays: our 2008 wage and premium increases will be retroactive to July 1 (our contract expired on June 30).
 

 
Bargaining Team Members:
Denise Bagley
Tania Boyd
Brent Morgan
Winnie Davies
Terry Scherwin
Jeff Kendig
Hawah Aminzason
Narshi Mungra
Roza Sisay
Dianne Brown
Jennifer Radcliffe
Levron Glover
Don Stenzel
Gloria Acosta
Valerie Corley
Linda Murphy