Includes improvements in staffing and significant wage increases that finally make Tobey competitive with all surrounding hospitals

WAREHAM, Mass., June 19, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- After almost nine months at the bargaining table, the registered nurses at Tobey Hospital in Wareham, who are unionized with the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), recently ratified a new three-year contract. The contract includes significant wage increases that – for the first time in a very long time – make the wages of Tobey RNs competitive with RN wages at all other South Coast hospitals. In addition, the nurses won language that places them on a new wage scale that fairly credits them, step for step, according to their years of RN licensure.

"During years two and three of the new contract, we will see across-the-board wage increases totaling almost five percent," said Chris Sousa, RN, and chairperson of the MNA bargaining unit at Tobey. "But the immediate movement onto a new wage scale is the breakthrough piece of this contract."

Previously, Tobey nurses were inconsistently and inappropriately placed on a wage scale consisting of subpar steps. "This piece of the contract gives our current nurses the salaries they have long deserved while also helping us to recruit and retain new nurses," added Sousa. "It's the foundation of recovery from an RN staffing shortage that has long plagued the hospital."

In year one of the contract, nurses are receiving a minimum of a 16% increase, with some receiving higher wages due to being placed on the new wage scale according to their year of RN licensure.

Additional Contract Improvements

The Tobey RNs also won significant staffing and workplace safety improvements, including:

• Charge RNs with reduced or no assignments
• New Stat Nurse positions
• New language limiting the assignment of non-nursing duties to RNs
• Important improvements to health and safety language, including language about pandemic preparedness and workplace violence

The Map to Winning a Landmark Contract

"This contract is the result of the tremendous hard work and solidarity of our small — but entirely committed — MNA bargaining unit," added Sousa. During their nine months of negotiations, countless Tobey nurses:

• Attended every bargaining session
• Ran a successful button campaign
• Collected signatures on their "petition for a fair contract" and delivered those signatures to Southcoast Health's New Bedford offices
• Had community supporters plant lawn signs throughout the town
• Held a successful informational picket
• Brought their struggles to elected leaders at the local, state, and federal level
• Testified at a special hearing on healthcare alongside Southcoast's CEO

"We succeeded in winning the contract Tobey nurses deserve," said Sousa. "And now we are ready to see this success play out in the form of nurses coming to, and staying at, Tobey Hospital for the long term."

The nurses' new three-year contract runs through September 30, 2026.

Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its 25,000 members advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies on healthcare issues affecting nurses and the public.

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SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association