March 19 Session

Dear Colleagues,

Wednesday, March 19, marked the second of three bargaining sessions this week. Highlights include:

• The parties reached one Tentative Agreement and are getting very close to agreement on two additional topics
  • The parties reached a tentative agreement in concept on Relief Nurse Attendance and are near closure on the inclusion of the Side Letters reached over the past three years. We are down to one open issue on Mixed Shifts and hope the parties can resolve that issue soon as well.
    
    
• Our team passed an updated proposal on New Technology that further protects a Nurse’s role and clinical judgment
  • Our proposal states that “the use of technology shall not limit the Nurse’s exercise of clinical judgment in assessment, evaluation, planning, and implementation of care, nor from acting as a patient advocate.” It further makes clear that new technologies are not intended to eliminate the Nurse’s role in the delivery of patient care.
    
    
• Our team’s response to CRONA’s package of proposals includes additional improvements for nurses
  • Our advance preparation enabled us to quickly and thoughtfully respond to CRONA’s package of proposals that we received on March 18. Our reply included additional improvements for nurses, including:
    • Enhanced wage increases so we continue to provide competitive wages based upon the market.
    • A 20% increase to the differential pay for non-benefitted relief nurses—from $10 per hour to $12 per hour.
      
      
• Our immigration enforcement response reinforces support for employees
  • We discussed our existing Hospital policy and committed to providing nurses with additional instructions and tools for interacting with law enforcement, including immigration enforcement officials, reinforcing the message from Stanford Medicine leaders during the March 19 Town Hall.
    
    
• The hospitals remain committed to providing a pathway for nurses interested in pursuing professional development and advancement
  • The hospitals’ original proposal expanded eligibility for the PNDP program to include ADNs and diploma nurses who meet certain threshold eligibility requirements. Under the current PNDP, ADNs and diploma nurses are not eligible at all.
    
    
  • Unfortunately, after three rounds of back-and-forth proposals on this topic, CRONA’s proposals never included any of our core requests. Since negotiations require a give and take from both sides, the hospitals withdrew their PNDP proposal yesterday.
    
    
  • However, we are still open to negotiating this important topic and having further discussions with CRONA should CRONA advance a proposal that addresses our core requests.
    
    
  • As a reminder, some of the new elements of our PNDP proposal included:
    • Addition of a brand-new category in which nurses can earn up to 15 points for participation in process improvement, quality improvement, evidence-based practice, and/or research projects, including Research and EBP fellowships.
    • Elimination of the PNDP’s current CEU requirement.
    • Continuation of the current BSN waiver language affecting existing nurses who didn’t have a BSN as of March 2022 and who had attained a Clin III or Clin IV level to maintain that level under the PNDP.

The parties return to the table on Thursday, March 20, and are scheduled to meet multiple days next week leading up to the expiration of the contract.

We have every intention of reaching an agreement that continues to make our hospitals a place where the best nurses want to spend their entire careers while also ensuring that our hospitals remain financially stable in the face of real revenue threats.

Thank you for your dedication and please stay tuned!