Just days before nearly 130 registered nurses at Petaluma Valley Hospital were set to strike, management caved on a proposal that would have threatened nurses’ ability to provide for themselves and their families.
The hospital had sought to increase the number of shifts it could cancel when the patient census was low from 14 per year to 52 per year. The proposal would have left nurses with no job security and no guarantee they could earn enough to pay rent or mortgages.
The hospital first reduced its demand to 24 shift cancellations per year — more than double the limit permitted at Sutter Health and Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital — but nurses again refused any increase.
Finally, in high-stakes negotiations, the hospital agreed to maintain the existing 14-shift cap and put more money on the table to avoid a strike.
“It’s never easy to negotiate with an out-of-state conglomerate that cares more about its profits than our nurses and patients, but we held firm and got a good agreement in the end,” said Allison Arnold, a nurse at the hospital. “They saw how strong our picket line was in April, and they knew our strike line would have been even stronger.”
The contract doesn’t fix every issue at the community hospital, where Providence has eliminated key services, including the birthing center, and has canceled more nurse shifts than allowed under the existing contract. The nurses have filed complaints regarding Petaluma Valley’s violations of the existing shift-cancellation limit, which are currently being heard by an arbitrator.
However, the contract will help close the wage gap between Petaluma Valley and other Providence hospitals in the region. Under the four-year agreement, nurses will get an 8.5 percent raise in 2026, a 6 percent raise in 2027, and 3 percent raises in 2028 and 2029. This is the first contract negotiated since the nurses affiliated with NUHW.
The contract also includes:
- Retention bonuses ranging from $1,250 to $2,000.
- Higher preceptor pay.
- Severance pay for full- and part-time nurses subject to a layoff.
- Staffing guarantees for the Intensive Care Unit, including a prohibition on placing an ICU nurse on-call more than twice in a pay period.
- Language that new technology should not preclude nurses from using their clinical judgment in the implementation of care.
- The ability to bargain over any changes to health benefits.
