MONDAY, noon — Members of the nurses union, some of whom make $200,000 a year, have ratified the new contract and will return to work tomorrow (May 3).
Roughly 83% of the nearly 5,000 nurses represented by the Committee for the Recognition of Nursing Achievement voted to ratify the contracts, which cover nurses at both hospitals.
Stanford Health Care said in a statement Monday the new contracts support the two sides’ “shared priorities” and will support nurses’ “health, well-being and ongoing professional development.”
“We look forward to welcoming our union-represented nurses back tomorrow, Tuesday, May 3,” Stanford Health Care said in its statement. “We appreciate the incredible effort that our entire health care workforce put forward last week.”
CRONA officials agreed Monday that both sides had shared goals, but suggested that they chose different ways to approach the negotiations.
“Sticking points really had to do with sort of a philosophical difference in how we approach things,” CRONA Vice President Kathy Stormberg said Monday. “It wasn’t so much that there was a specific issue, rather that it was a complete package of changes that we were working on.”
“The final result that we were able to achieve is was rewarding in that we believe that the hospitals have realized that they need their nurses at the bedside,” CRONA President Colleen Borges said.
CRONA officials had argued that Stanford Health Care and Packard Children’s were not adequately reinvesting in staffing at either hospital after they received hundreds of millions in federal pandemic relief funding — Stanford Health Care’s financial disclosure for the end of the 2021 fiscal year reported that revenue for the two hospitals grew 16% to a combined $8.3 billion.
SATURDAY — Nurses at Stanford Health Care and Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital are voting this weekend on a new contract that will end their five-day-old strike.
The union, known as the Committee for Recognition of Nursing Achievement, said the proposed three-year contract would give members:
• 5% on April 1, 2022;
• 2% on Dec. 1, 2022;
• 5% on April 1, 2023; and
• 5% on April 1, 2024.
At the beginning of negotiations, the hospitals were offering 12% over three years while the nurses wanted 20%. The proposed contract calls for 17%.
The hospitals also guaranteed an additional week of pre-scheduled vacation for all nurses starting in 2024.
The union’s membership still needs to vote through the weekend on whether to approve the agreement.
About 5,000 nurses went on strike Monday.
At the top of the pay scale, clinical nurses make about $200,000 per year. The proposed contract would increase their pay to $234,000 at the end of three years.
240K a year? These nurses are really out of touch. Glad none of the strikers or security guards were hit by the Ferarri’s the nurses must be driving around. Wonder how much this pay increase will cause health insurance rates to rise?
That’s just clinical nurses– if you search online, you’ll see that other nurses make upward of 350k pre-strike. That’s more than some doctors!!
It makes me want to go back to college and get a nursing degree, get into a new graduate program, and start a 3o years career in nursing, apparently the highest most senior and experienced nurses get the higher pay scale. Only problem is I wouldn’t like all that death, sickness and exhaustion stuff. The dead babies and kids would be a real downer.
First you hear that they’re on strike, so you feel sympathetic for them. Then you find out what they’re making and it’s shocking. It’s like baseball players or NFL players going on strike. They’re overpaid and unable to resolve their differences. You feel no sympathy at all. And as for them being “heros” during Covid — a lot of people had to work with the general public during the pandemic. I thin the “hero” label is applied too broadly these days, especially to workers who are so well paid.
@jenny, we are not overpaid. We live in the Silicon Valley/Bay area which is one of THE most expensive places in America. Unless you want us to drive 2 hours away. We fought for our value. We fought pandemic while maybe you stayed at home. I will be happy to show you what we do in our ICU everyday so you will understand our value. We fought for better working conditions so that we can continue to give world class care to our patients. We were there for our patients, intellectually, physically and emotionally. Even if they pay us the moon, the mental and emotional injury that most of us endured during the pandemic will forever be with us and suffered by us.
If the nurses are so vital, how come Stanford was able to replace them?