Empowering Nurses through Union Advocacy - Expert Edition Episode 63
In today's episode, I'm diving deep into what it means to be a union nurse in the San Francisco Bay Area and sharing some exciting news about a book giveaway. We recently negotiated a new contract that's more than just about pay—it's about safe patient care, decent living wages, and our health. I'll break down the benefits we secured and explain how our union fights for us nurses. Also, don’t forget to join our book giveaway by reviewing and following us on social media links below:
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TRANSCRIPT:
Naseema: [00:00:00] All right, before we get started a major announcement, I am doing a book giveaway. So my good home girl, Jackie Cummins Kosky wrote a fire for dummies book, major accomplishment, major shout outs to her. And she'll be featured on the Thursday episode of the financially intentional podcast, but I am giving away a copy of this fire for dummies book for one of my lucky listeners.
Now, here is what you need to do to qualify. You need to write a for the financially intentional podcast on apple podcast and DM me a screenshot of that review. You also need to be following me financially intentional. And following Jackie Cummings Koski under at Phenomenal Woman to receive your book.
The first person that does that will receive the book. Now you have to live in the U. [00:01:00] S. because international shipping fees are no joke. So this is limited to people in the U. S. again, in order to win this fire. Fire for dummies book, which maybe in the last page might have a mention of your girl in there.
Please leave a review for the financially intentional podcast on Apple podcast. Send me a screenshot of that podcast via DMS at financially intentional on Instagram, and then make sure you're following myself and Jackie Cummings Koski at Phenomenal Woman. All right, let's hop into it. So I have on my scrubs today because.
Even though it's my day off, I had to go to work, whatever, long story. Hey, it's four hours. Anyway, if you don't know, I am a nurse in the San Francisco Bay Area, and we are known to be some of the best compensated nurses pretty much in the world. And What it really is, though, is that we fight for a living wage. I've mentioned my pain on the podcast. I mentioned my cost of living. Obviously, cost of living in the San Francisco Bay area is pretty [00:02:00] high. So we should be compensated for it. But, nurses should be able to, purchase a house and have a decent living, make a living wage where they work.
And so we fight really hard for that, but it's not just about pay. Recently we just negotiated our new contract, even though we've been out of contract actually, since last July, we finally reached an agreement and voted on a new contract at The main hospital that I work with, and I'm just going to break down some of the benefits that we got.
And so you can understand it's not just about pay. It's about making sure that we have safe patient care and making sure that, our health is protected in general.
I just want to talk about what it means to me to be a union nurse so Three things that really stand out is being able to have a living wage. My guarantee breaks if I don't get breaks. I get a penalty pay. But I wouldn't take my breaks [00:03:00] over that anytime. And the thing about working nights is it does cause a lot of wear and tear on your body.
And I am not naive to that. I make sure that I take my breaks and I sleep. During my breaks, I don't play around with my breaks and then we have safe patient ratios and labor and delivery. We're typically 1 to 1, most of the time, sometimes 1 to 2, but we don't play around with the ratios. And as a union nurse I've experienced all of those things and numerous benefits that has positively impacted my career and being.
Part of being a union nurse has allowed me to benefit from 1 of the highest salaries in the country. Again, this has given me a greater sense of financial stability and security, allowing me to focus on providing the best possible care to my patients. The union has provided me with job security, knowing that my union contract protects my job and prioritizes seniority has given me peace of mind and allow me to focus on my work without worrying [00:04:00] about job security.
Being part of a union has also allowed me to engage in collective bargaining, just like this contract I'm talking about, ensuring that my concerns and needs are heard and addressed. Being a part of a union has provided me with access to resources including educational. Training programs networking opportunities and legal resources.
These resources have allowed me to improve my skills as a nurse and advance my career while also providing me with a supportive community with like minded professional, the union advocates for nurses on a broader scale. So like lobbying for laws and policies that protect our rights and improve patient care, knowing that my union is fighting for me.
And my patients give me a sense of pride and purpose in my work as a nurse. All those things are great. Now, are you flawless? No, I've actually had a union to fail me. When I was let go of my job before I reached out to the union and they did not protect me at all. [00:05:00] However, I protected myself and got my own lawyer, but there was a clause in there that was overlooked until too late.
But he could have actually sued the union for not representing me through the process or a, to me in meeting and conferring with my manager. So they didn't do any of that, even though I reached out to them several times. So then they are actually liable, but we actually didn't need to go down that path.
But just know, if your union does not do what they're contractually obligated to do for you. They can be held liable. And also, even if you're not paying dues to your union, they still have to represent you. They call them freeloaders. I think it's funny, but if you're not paying union dues, because it is collective, you are still represented.
So that's something to keep in mind. So I just want to read to you some of the things that we we're able to get. In this new contract, so we're going to get an 11. 25 increase over the 1st, 2 months of our [00:06:00] contract. So we'll get that by the end of May right after. Ratification, we'll get a 5. 5 increase and then On May 15th, happy birthday to me, we'll get a 5. 5 percent increase. And then in July, we'll get a 5. 75. Percent increase, and then we get an across the board pay increase of 22. 5 percent over 4 years of the agreement and this is in addition to any step increases for example, for a certain amount of years.
I've been there for 13 years. I came in at step 2, and now I'm step 8 at every step you get a pay increase. So this includes the percentage. An additional percentage onto that step increase. So we're going to get retro pay back to September 2023. now, I told you that our contract was over in July.
Technically, we should have gotten retro pay back to July, but we did put on a strike notice. And when we did that [00:07:00] the hospital used some of the money for the retro pay to pay for. The deposit that they put down on the strike nurses, even though we didn't go on strike. So let me just. Explain that a little bit better.
So my hospital that I've worked at is a community hospital and never in the history of the hospital have they strike. So most hospitals have strike insurance, like your bigger hospitals, like your Kaiser's or Summit Setters. I'm sorry, they have strike insurance, but my hospital didn't have strike insurance.
And A striking was a big deal as putting in strike notice was a big deal and we put in a strike notice because we were asking for things that weren't being met and they were changing our healthcare and not even raising our salaries to keep up with the rate of inflation, so not only were they making us pay more out of our pocket for health care, they were paying us essentially less because we can keep up with the cost of inflation.
And we used to actually be the highest paid [00:08:00] hospital in the country and, because we hadn't been getting cost of living increases over the past couple of years, we have fallen way down on that list. And so it brings us with our pay increases is helping us get back to 1 of the top 5 hospitals in the country as far as pay.
Addition to our across the board pay increase of 22. 5%, our shifting differentials are changing. If you work evening shift, you get an extra 7 dollars and 30 cents per hour. If you work. Night shift, you get an extra 11. 11 dollars and 75 cents per hour. If you're a charge nurse your differential goes to 5 dollars.
And if you're precepting your differential goes to 4 dollars. So that means if you get. Your base pay is 100 dollars an hour, then you add 11 plus the 5 for being a charge nurse. You see what I'm saying? So it just increases your base pay, depending [00:09:00] on when you work. We also get weekend pay. If you work Saturday, Sunday, they group them in 2 different sets, you get paid for your weekends, but also the contract also guaranteed some patient care, safe staffing things.
Protected. Time for clinical in service education. So for us, we're getting guaranteed protected uninterrupted time free a patient assignments to complete mandatory classes, electronic study courses, policy reviews, skills, days, simulations, and we'll receive up to 2 hours of straight time to complete these in services outside of their regular shift.
So we can do our education as an assignment so they're saying we have to have that as uninterrupted time, because I put a mandate on us that we have to complete education by a certain time, or then we're going to get disciplinary action. But oftentimes we have full patient loads.
So we're trying to squeeze in education between patient care and it's not really safe. We're also [00:10:00] getting some 12 and 8 hour shift protections. There are units that want to transition to 12 hour shifts. We have a mix of people who are working 12 hours, just 10 people who are working 8 hour shifts.
If those units are transitioning to 12 hour shifts, the people who still want to work 8, their jobs will be protected. They will be able to remain an 8 hour shift employee until they, decide to change otherwise, so if you're 8 hours, you can stay out 8 hours. You don't have to convert to 12 hours unless you want to for nurses that float, they are enforcing safe floating practices.
So it's just if you float to a unit you can't be assigned. A full patient assignment, then, and then they tell you to go to another unit. So we have nurses that work in the, but then we'll come up to labor and delivery to work postpartum. And if they already had an assignment in the, they can't have a full patient assignment and labor and delivery.
They [00:11:00] would have to be like a break nurse or something. And then they also have protections in here for a part time positions. They are going to take away a lot of part time positions. So they protected those 3, 5th positions that the management was proposing that they should reduce.
Also, the union also had some protections in there for expanding infectious disease protocols and workplace violence protections. That's super important. Talked about, they are improve some language around discipline and how long of a period it take is to drop off. So they secured a new and unprecedented language that would guarantee expunging the following disciplines.
Verbal reprimands within 12 months. And written reprimands within a 48 hour period. So if you used to get those, you used to be on track to be terminated. Let's see. They also fought for the right for per diems to also get protected time to use for bereavement leave and not have that count [00:12:00] against them as like an occurrence or an occurrence is when you get written up for an attendance violation and then they also are letting the per diem.
Be able to have a more seniority if they convert to a benefit employee. It used to be that you used to have to have 3000 hours to count for 1 year of seniority. So if you are per diem, and you work less than 3 hours, you would not get a full year of credit. If say, for example.
When I first started working there, I was per diem and as long as I worked 3000 hours in a year, I could count that as a year of service when I convert it into being full time. If you got less than that, you couldn't count that year. So now they drop that language from 3000 hours down to 2000 hours.
So it only takes you 2000 hours to get a year counted towards your seniority. And that's important for cancellation and [00:13:00] all of those things. Now to call in sick you have to call in a little bit earlier, but that is to protect, like people who get canceled, like per diems, if you get canceled instead of two hours before your shift.
So if your shift starts at seven, they used to have until five o'clock to cancel you. Now they have until four 30. So you'll have, it's typically for per diems usually have a couple of jobs. If they canceled you early, you can call to your other job and be like, Hey, can I come over there and work? And so a lot of per diems were quitting because they would get canceled and then they would be needed at their other job, but it would be too late to go there.
So that protects that holidays, we get. An additional day off from 60 to 90 days and ensuring no, she's get full time off for work for their full time off for work holidays. Oh, my God. The biggest thing is that we are getting new uniforms. At this hospital, they are known for wearing white uniforms.
Now, the only reason why I don't wear white. This is because I'm [00:14:00] a labor and delivery nurse and we do surgery. So we usually wear blues. But the postpartum nurses have to wear white. And it was just supposed to be like a professionalism thing. Now we finally got the right after 100 years to change the uniform color from white to this Navy, and we get a 1 time 100 dollar stipend.
And then we got the kind of downside is that we got a new health care plan. That's going into effect July 1st, which we have 2 different tiers of plans to choose from, which changes our compensation. So if we go to the hospital and within the hospital network, typically, a lot of that is no deductible, no out of max, but for people like me that live an hour away from the hospital and have little kids that's not even feasible.
Typically, everything that I do falls into tier 2 like, we use blue shield. So tier 1 is everything done at the hospital or those places [00:15:00] contracted next to the hospital. But my pediatrician. Is by my house and all that kind of stuff like the pharmacy. I don't want to go to the local pharmacy So I go to the walgreens and so all that stuff usually falls under a second tier so those things have changed and those things are more expensive So I think for me, I think i'm going to choose the plan that's going to take my nice insurance that I only pay 26 to pay period for for my family, for To like Almost 200.
So that's a big blow. However, we didn't really have a choice in the matter. So yeah, those are some things that are benefits of being in a union. So you understand, what unions are for and how they protect the nurses and, California nurses association is a pretty strong union and we're fighting to get these rights to Be transferred throughout the country and I think with cobit and people seeing how [00:16:00] much hospitals can pay, they are demanding to get paid more at least a living wage.
And if you ever consider working at a union hospital versus not, these are some things to consider unions aren't 100 percent fail proof but unions have changed the game for, Nursing and patient care in California. Yep, that's what's going on again. Remember I am doing a giveaway for the fire for dummies book.
And that is the apple podcast review. Screenshot in my DMS, make sure you're following myself and Jackie Cummings Koski at phenomenal woman. And I'll see you on Thursday's episode where we'll be talking about this book. All right. Peace y'all.
Hey there I’m Naseema
My dream is for everyone to know that financial independence is attainable with a little intentionality. Learn how I can help you finally break the cycle of living paycheck to paycheck.
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