Strike called off. Kadlec nurses reach tentative agreement with hospital

The nurses at Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland have halted plans for a strike.

After a 13-hour bargaining session, the Washington State Nurses Association and leaders from Providence Kadlec reached a compromise. The union announced the tentative agreement early Tuesday.

“We worked through all of the proposals in a thoughtful and deliberate way and in the end found common ground to reach agreement,” said Kirk Harper, Kadlec chief nursing officer and chief operating officer.

Union officials said the new agreement will keep nurses safer and preserves their paid time off.

“The nurses at Kadlec stood united, voted to authorize a strike and were deep into strike preparations,” Vanessa Douglas, a nurse in the ICU at Kadlec and a member of the negotiating team, said in a prepared statement. “Without that unity we would never have been able to fight off the harsh takeaways Providence Kadlec had proposed.”

The Kadlec nurses made it happen with pickets and approving a strike combined with the union’s work with other employee unions across the state, said union officials.

“Fourteen months ago, when Providence Kadlec came to the table with proposals to slash paid time off, we wouldn’t have thought this tentative agreement was possible,” union officials said in a social media post to members.

Hospital nurses will still need to vote on the agreement, and the union has not said when the meeting would be held.

Kadlec said it would reserve comment on the details of the agreement until the nurses had a chance to review and ratify the agreement at union meetings.

But it did thank the community for its patience during negotiations.

“We look forward to continuing to work side-by-side with all of our Kadlec caregivers in delivering on our mission of safe, compassionate care,” Harper said.

3-year contract

The proposed contract will span three years, plus the past year when the previous contract was expired.

And, along with preserving the paid time off for existing employees, they also will see a 10 percent pay increase by January 2022.

The agreement also “recognizes nurses’ discretion” to leave a patient that poses an immediate risk of violence. They would then work with a manager to ensure the nurse and the patient are safe.

The two sides have been in negotiations for more than a year, with nurses rallying a number of times to talk about safety and pay issues.

While they never left work, a majority of the 900 registered nurses at Kadlec Regional Medical Center voted to authorize a strike in late October.

Nurses at Sacred Heart Medical Center and health care workers at some of the other Providence hospitals continue their fight to keep their earned illness plans, said the union.

Sacred Heart nurses held an unsuccessful mediation session on Friday and continue their strike preparations, said the union.

Kadlec nurses were among the 15,000 Providence workers who had voted to authorize a strike.

“There is no doubt in my mind that our solidarity across unions made this tentative agreement possible,” Martha Galvez, a labor and delivery nurse at Kadlec and chair of the WSNA Kadlec local unit, in a prepared statement.

“Four years ago, Providence sat across the bargaining table and made a promise on paid time off and illness banks. It took all of us standing together to make them keep that promise,” she said.

This story was originally published November 26, 2019 at 9:48 AM.