Pittsburgh Union Progress learned late Monday night that union nurses and health care workers at Allegheny Valley Hospital had approved a new three-year contract, thus averting a threatened strike.
The agreement “includes a significant investment in frontline staff,” according to a statement from SEIU Healthcare PA. Union members will see an average 16% increase in pay and compensation. Some members will see increases as high as 36%.
All currently employed nurses will earn a minimum of $40 an hour; health care workers — patient care techs, housekeepers, dietary staff and transporters — will earn a minimum of $20 per hour.
More than 450 nurses and hospital workers approved the contract on Monday. At Allegheny Valley, nurses and service workers negotiate their contracts together.
Union negotiators and Allegheny Health Network reached the agreement shortly before a scheduled vote to set a strike date. Late last week, hospital workers rallied outside the Natrona Heights facility after voting to authorize a walkout. That vote served as a warning to hospital administrators that the workers were serious about their demands that AHN increase pay and staffing levels.
The contract also adds nursing assistant positions to some inpatient units and provides for increased safety measures such as a weapons detection system at the main entrance and increased security.
Union negotiators defeated an AHN proposal to scale back health benefits currently provided to the hospital’s nurses and health care workers, the union said.
The union statement hailed the contract as the latest in a series of “landmark agreements” between union members and AHN that were initiated by an accord last fall at Allegheny General Hospital. That contract “set new industry standards for the recruitment and retention of frontline staff,” the statement read.
Nurses at AHN’s West Penn Hospital in Bloomfield continue to work toward a new contract. Also late Monday night, the SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania nurse negotiating committee there reached a tentative agreement with management for a new contract, and union members are to vote on it on Wednesday.
Those nurses voted more than two weeks ago to authorize a strike should union negotiators consider one necessary.
Steve is a photojournalist and writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he is currently on strike and working as a Union Progress co-editor. Reach him at smellon@unionprogress.com.