The first unified Sutter contract campaign in NUHW history ended in victory with nine new contracts that will significantly increase salaries and position workers to work together to win even more in the years to come.
The contracts cover about 1,400 workers who are employed by Sutter California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, Sutter Center for Psychiatry in Sacramento, and county-based Sutter hospice and home care programs across Northern California. The deals were finalized over several weeks of late-night bargaining sessions after workers set a strike date.
“It was an exhausting, but also exciting process,” said Kent Slauenwhite, a nursing assistant and bargaining team member at CPMC. “There were moments where it wasn’t clear that we’d be able to reach an agreement, but none of us wavered. We stuck together. We knew we were ready to strike, and so did Sutter.”
NUHW members at CPMC hospitals in San Francisco will get 14 percent wage increases over the next two years, with additional wage scale improvements for several job classifications. The contract also includes additional paid time off, greater protection against changes to the health plan, improved bereavement leave, and a new category of workers to cover leaves of absence and address chronic understaffing.
Workers at the Sutter Care at Home offices will get 7.5 percent increases over the next two years in addition to anniversary raises. The contract also requires Sutter to provide an hour’s pay to workers who must miss their lunch break; provide half-day pay to workers who show up for work but are told they aren’t needed that day; and follow strict rules when temporarily assigning someone outside their work area.
The contract also includes new rules regarding productivity metrics, including a written statement that there is no productivity expectation for hospice workers.
Workers at Sutter’s psychiatric hospital in Sacramento won 7.5 percent raises over the next two years in addition to anniversary raises, additional raises for long-tenured workers, and a class of licensed vocational nurses who will see salaries increase by more than 20 percent.
“The ratification of this contract is going to make a huge difference, not only for our staff but for our patients,” said Leili Lemmons, an inpatient licensed vocational nurse.
The contract also includes new rules that will make it harder for Sutter to cancel shifts when there is a low census, and make it easier for workers to enforce the rules if Sutter improperly cancels any shift.
The hospital contracts both include provisions that significantly increase NUHW organizers’ ability to access Sutter hospitals and should prevent Sutter from banning organizers, which it has done previously without valid explanations.
All the contracts are set to expire at the same time, which means NUHW members at Sutter can once again use their collective power to negotiate the best possible agreements going forward.
“This is a great achievement by the workers,” said NUHW Hospital Division Director Abid Yahya, who led negotiations for eight of the nine contracts. “These agreements represent a huge leap forward in our relationship with Sutter, and we accomplished it because our members stood united every step of the way.”
The unified contract campaign came after a slew of organizing victories in recent years, more than doubling the number of NUHW members who work for Sutter with big wins at the Sacramento psychiatric hospital and numerous Sutter Care at Home locations across the region.
For more than seven months, the bargaining teams for each unit
met together as a Joint Bargaining Team that made collective decisions for the entire campaign.
“I’m super proud of how we bargained these contracts,” said Finnie Ng, an RN case manager at SCAH Alameda Home Health. “Sutter tried to divide us, but we all picketed together, and we were all prepared to strike together. These contracts are just the start of what we can achieve.”
