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UFT’s Lutheran Medical nurses approve pact with raises, no givebacks
Mar 4, 2010 6:16 PM
UFT Federation of Nurses members at Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn overwhelmingly ratified a new contract that raises salaries by 8 percent over three years, keeps health and pension benefits intact and requires no givebacks.
UFT Special Representative Anne Goldman, who led the intense negotiations, hailed the new contract — which tallied only five no votes during the Feb. 22 ratification — as a great victory in these tough economic times for the 700 nurses at the facility.
She called the win a “test of who we are and of what we were able to accomplish with the encouragement and full support of UFT President Michael Mulgrew and the union.”
She said the new agreement “protects, preserves and improves working conditions for all our members. It puts money in their pockets by moving forward with percentage raises, holds onto threatened health and pension benefits and ensures and improves staffing ratios.”
Salaries, retroactive to Jan. 1, will increase by 2.5 percent this year, 2.5 percent in 2011 and 3 percent in the final year.
“We’re thrilled that our negotiating team was able to deliver for our members by working efficiently and effectively at the bargaining table,” Mulgrew said. “The contract, with salary increases and no givebacks, was a great accomplishment, especially in this economic climate.”
It took around-the-clock bargaining, beginning 9 a.m. Friday morning, Feb. 19, until 6 a.m. Saturday, and a looming strike deadline of midnight on March 1 to nail down the final agreement.
“It was a deadline with teeth,” Goldman noted.
Lutheran Chapter Leader Renee Setteducato said management “knew we were united.” She credited a “fierce and ferocious” Goldman for bringing the contract in on time — the only union in the health care field with an on-time contract.
“Anne insisted that bargaining must continue all weekend or all week if necessary,” Setteducato said. “It was around 4:45 a.m. Saturday morning when management finally got it.”
Goldman was able to fight off management’s demand to reduce salaries for some nurses in ambulatory settings. She warned Lutheran Medical Center that she was negotiating to protect all nurses and to make sure there were no differences in working conditions, hours or pay whether nurses work in small units or large units.
On the contentious and high-cost issue of nurse-patient ratios which has generated many grievances at Lutheran, the negotiators won a commitment from management to improve staffing over the life of the contract. It’s a battle Goldman has long fought as an issue of fairness to nurses and excellent patient care, of “patient advocacy versus cost containment.”
Summing up the chapter’s response to the contract, Setteducato noted that the nursing staff concerned about security were particularly delighted that the contract dead-ended a threat to discontinue defined-benefit pensions, protected health benefits — even enriching the dental plan — and added a raise on top of it. Everyone is pleased that staffing, while still a work in progress, will improve in the next three years, she said.
Setteducato spoke of the allegiance that nurses feel toward Goldman, especially those who worked without a union in the early 1970s.
“We remember what they did to us then,” Setteducato said. “We’ve been there. So there are scores of nurses who would walk over hot coals for Anne Goldman.”
