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New wage contract attempts to bridge gap

NURSING HOME WORKERS TO RECEIVE PAY INCREASES TIED TO KAISER NURSES’ RAISES

SAN RAFAEL, NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – Nurses from 10 Bay Area nursing homes finalized an unprecedented agreement with employers last week that will create a system tying wage increases to those with the union’s Kaiser Permanente nurses, who normally receive much higher raises.

The arrangement mandates that the nursing home workers receive wage increases at the same time and equal in percentage to their Kaiser counterparts in an effort to eliminate the “two-tiered system,” their spokesman said.

“The key standard we achieved here was having wages of nursing homes linked with nurses at Kaiser, so when we bargain at Kaiser the nurses at these 10 nursing homes will get an increase equal in percentage,” said Mason Stockstill, spokesman for the SEIU United Healthcare Workers West union, which represents more than 150,000 workers at more than 100 nursing homes and 50 hospitals.

“Right now there is a two-tier system where someone can do the same job at a nursing home as someone in a hospital, but they will make less money. We believe that they should earn the same pay, which is one of the advantages of representing both types of workers in one union,” he said.

The tentative agreement with Mariner Health Care was reached July 2 and includes 1,000 nursing home workers in San Pablo, San Jose, Sacramento, Fremont, Hayward, Santa Cruz and San Rafael. The agreement affects about 63 workers in the Marin County facility, Pine Ridge Care Center, but is tied to hundreds of union workers in North Bay Kaiser facilities.

Workers ratified the agreement last Wednesday, and the contract is operative Aug. 1.

According to the union, negotiations were relatively smooth, lasting less than three months. The contract will last two years and be re-signed or renegotiated when it expires. No one from the employing company was available for comment, but Mr. Stockstill said the union and Mariner have “a good working relationship.”

“It’s pretty typical across the country for nursing home employees to be paid less than hospital workers, but we feel like this is the first step to closing that gap,” he said. “The reason why we chose Kaiser was not only because their employees were also union members, but they are considered to have one of the best hospital contracts in the country.”

Also in the contract, the minimum base pay for workers will be $16.61 per hour, which is the highest starting pay for this position of all California nursing homes. The contract also includes employment-security guarantees, establishes patient-care committees and creates a code of conduct for organizing drives at facilities where workers are not yet union-organized.

The negotiations are part of a statewide concurrent bargaining effort of more than 75,000 members.

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