Local 5089 UH Contract Update: Agreement Close

Our HPAE Local 5089 Negotiating Committee held our latest bargaining session with University Hospital on Friday, September 30th.

We reached a number of tentative agreements that will clear the path for our entire focus to now be on wages:

• Inclement Weather: We reached an agreement that will motivate the Hospital administration to declare inclement weather events more often as well as provide benefits for those members that work during the event. The new agreement affords meals and sleeping accommodations for those members that work, and protects our members from automatic discipline if they are unable to report to work.
• Tuition Refund: We signed an agreement to increase the tuition reimbursement to attend any school. And, because the former UMDNJ School of Nursing no longer exists, we ensured that a nurse already receiving a higher reimbursement to attend the Rutgers School of Nursing will not lose that benefit.
• Floating: Management withdrew their proposal to make the PACU part of the Critical Care float district.
• Shift Differentials: We signed a tentative agreement that will allow all current 12-hour day shift nurses to continue to receive the shift differential after 3:00 pm. Management wanted to take it away altogether.
• .9 Experience Credit: .9s have been treated like other part-timers and only credited with one year experience for every two years worked. We updated our earlier agreement to ensure that “.9” Staff Nurses will be now credited with full-time experience back to 2011, not just prospectively.

We also updated language related to non-discrimination and information reported to the union. More details will be shared when we have an agreement for the entire contract.

In related news, our sister union at University Hospital, HPAE Local 5094, reached a tentative agreement for a new contract. With our next session scheduled for October 14th, we are optimistic that an agreement can be reached.