(The Center Square) – It took 12 bargaining sessions to reach a tentative agreement between the Washington State Nurses Association and Seattle Children’s Hospital.
The agreement would offer $10/hour raises for all 1,700 nurses represented by WSNA over the next 12 months.
The nurses union views the hourly raise as unprecedented, calling the deal a historic contract in the hospital’s history.
“This is the first time I’ve felt a sense of relief in months,” Edna Cortez, a registered nurse at Seattle Children’s for 32 years, and co-chair of WSNA said in a statement.
Along with a $10/hour raise, the base rate for newly graduated nurses would be the highest in the city at $47.60/hour by August 2024.
By the end of a three-year contract, nurses on the beginning step of the wage scale would see their pay increase by 49.7%, according to WSNA
“We were able to make the wage scale more equitable for nurses at the lower end of the scale while ensuring that senior nurses received increases we’ve never seen before at Children’s,” Pamela Chandran, labor counsel for WSNA said in a statement.
Prior to the tentative agreement, nurses advanced to the next step on the wage scale through hours worked rather than years of experience. WSNA said that as a result, nurses who worked part time were far below what they would have gotten at another hospital.
The tentative agreement between the children’s hospital and the nurses union comes after more than 900 nurses at Seattle Children’s Hospital took part in an informational picket outside the hospital on Aug. 9 demanding changes to their contract.
Last month, the Washington State Hospital Association released a report claiming that in the first quarter of 2022 alone, hospitals and health systems in Washington lost nearly $1 billion.
One reason the organization says hospitals lost so much was because of an increase in employee compensation of 10%, while the number of employees remained stagnant.
