The Registered Nurses Association, a local union of the Ohio Nurses Association, ratified a three-year collective bargaining agreement with the University of Cincinnati Medical Center June 20.
The nurses, who have been bargaining with UCMC since March, used the union platform to address retention, safe nurse staffing and patient care issues.
"We addressed a major concern with our old on-call system that, if continued, could have negatively impacted safe nurse staffing and patient care," said Jeannette Porter, RN, union president. "On-call should be used for emergencies and unforeseen circumstances, like call-offs or influxes in patients. With the new contract language, on-call will only be used for such unanticipated situations instead of as a staffing tool that could lend itself to nurse fatigue."
Nurses will be paid a premium if they are called in for inappropriate situations as a deterrent for going back to the "old way," and the hospital will now have nurses staffed appropriately from the start, Ms. Porter said.
Union members will realize an average of a 5.7 percent wage increase in the first year of the contract, Ms. Porter said. Additionally, nurses who enter the float pool will receive pay differentials ranging from an additional $10 to $20 per hour added to their base, depending on the day and hours worked.
"Under the new terms, a four-year nurse who enters the float pool has the potential to realize an outstanding 82 percent increase in salary from what they are earning today," Ms. Porter said.
The agreement went into effect July 1 and expires June 30, 2021.