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Negotiations Survey

Hopefully you have received your negotiations survey. Please take the time to complete the survey on paper or online. The SNA Negotiations Team needs the information to represent you in contract negotiations.
The SNA Team uses the information from the survey to generate proposals for contract changes, determine our emphasis and support our arguments for proposals.

ARU-We were notified in late March that ARU will remain open and move to the main campus in the future.

Layoffs-Skilled Ortho and Psych Depts.

A number of Staff Nurses from depts that are slated to be closed have obtained positions at SRMH main campus, PVH or other facilities.

Staff Nurses in the Psych Dept. may have the opportunity to continue to work in Psych as employees of PSI (formally Horizon) if an agreement can be negotiated between PSI and the owners of the Fulton Rd. building. Rumors of such an agreement have not been confirmed as of the writing of this Newsletter.

The mechanism for implementing the "bumping" process prescribed by the SNA contract has been discussed between the SNA Board and members of Administration and the details agreed upon.

During the last week of March, eligible, qualified Staff Nurses from the affected departments who desire to participate will meet individually with an SNA Board member and members of Administration to put the bumping process into effect.

In order to "bump" another Staff Nurse from their positions, the Nurse must be qualified to work in the Nurse's position and department with 5 days orientation and must be willing to accept the Nurse's classification and shift.

All Nurses who are laid off will be placed on the recall list in order of seniority. Nurses on the recall list will have "first right" to posted positions for which they are qualified as they become available. The recall period is either six months or one year depending on years of seniority.

ARU Holiday Pay

A number of Staff Nurses were paid incorrectly for working the Martin Luther King holiday. Nurses may also have been paid incorrectly for the New Year's holiday and for holidays in 2007.
Both the SNA contract and Hospital Policy state that Staff Nurses are paid for all holiday hours worked.

Investigation by members of the Human Resources (HR) dept revealed that the payroll dept had made a change in how they pay for holidays worked. Their new rules stated that a Nurse would receive holiday pay only if the majority of the hours they worked for their shift were during the defined holiday. According to this rule, a Staff Nurse working 7pm-7am during a holiday that began at 11pm the night before would not receive any holiday pay since only four hours of their shift occurred during holiday
hours.

This payroll rule is not consistent with the SNA contract or with hospital policy. The SNA Board has been assured that the payroll error has been corrected and back pay for holidays that were paid incorrectly will be issued.

Please check your paycheck stubs to make sure that you were paid correctly for holidays or that back pay was received.

Clinical Ladders

Please consult the Clinical Ladder Guidelines on CareNet when you are planning how you will complete Clinical Ladder criteria and as you are filling out the Clinical Ladder Evaluation form.

Some of the criteria require your managers approval-eg Community Service and Dept Activities. You'll want to obtain this approval, in writing prior to working on a project or you may find that it isn't approved after the fact.

Note that all of the criteria require that you document specifically what you have done to complete the criteria. For example, proof of your attendance at committee meetings and information/details of your contribution to the committee since the criteria specifies that you be an active member. Since you represent your department on that committee sharing the information with your colleagues is important.

PAY FOR COMMITTEE MEETINGS-Staff nurses who are using committees as criteria for their clinical ladder ARE TO BE PAID for attendance at committee meetings. Directors/Mgr are informing Staff Nurses incorrectly that they are not paid for committee meetings. We are working with members of administration to resolve this.

The SNA Board is available to consult with you and offer coaching regarding completion of the criteria. We have also identified errors made by members of management in denying some of the criteria. Please contact us if criteria have been denied and you need help before your evaluation has been rejected a second time.

We've worked with members of administration to standardize the criteria so that Staff Nurses are being evaluated as equally as possible. This may mean that expectations have changed for some Nurses.

ICN Staff Nurse coverage for meal breaks and attendance at deliveries

ICN Staff Nurses have been tracking shifts, with their manager, to determine whether they have adequate staff to cover Nurses for meal breaks and attendance at deliveries. Coverage is usually possible if the patient census is no higher than 6-8 babies and an ICN Nurse can be spared to be assigned to well baby nursery. That ICN Nurse can then be available to ICN.

So far, six 3North Staff Nurses have cross trained to ICN to care for stable babies. These Nurses can then supplement ICN coverage of Well Baby Nursery and be available to ICN. Opportunities to cross-train remain.

Because efforts to ensure coverage for breaks and attendance at deliveries are successful approximately 45-75% for the shifts depending on census, the SNA Board is concerned that further efforts will be required to ensure coverage.

3North Positions

3North Staff Nurses reported to SNA and members of Hospital Administration in October 2007 that positions on 3North that were posted did not match the hours actually being worked by Staff Nurses. Investigation revealed that a 3North manager no longer employed at SRMH, changed positions for some Nurses when they applied for posted positions without re-posting the positions. For example, a Nurse may have applied for an eight hour position and while interviewed, asked for a 12 hour position. The manager gave the Nurse a 12 hour position without re-posting.

The practice was a violation of the SNA contract and hospital policy. Both require that positions be posted.

In October 2007, a few of the manager's errors had been identified. However, as time progressed, 21 Staff Nurse positions have been identified as having been filled in error.

Members of the HR department required months to complete an extensive investigation of all positions fill by the particular manager.

Now that the investigation is complete, members of Nursing management are meeting with the Nurses in positions that were identified in order to review the options available to each Nurse. These options are based on what is needed to correct the contract violation and are as close as possible to what the Staff Nurse may have wanted, taking the department's staffing needs into consideration. The options usually include:

1) accepting the position as it was originally posted
Or
2) posting the position that they have been working on 3North.
If a more senior, qualified Nurse applies for the posted positions, they will vacate a position that will then be posted.
The Human Resources department has instituted double check mechanisms to ensure that they will detect similar errors in the future before positions are filled erroneously.

Association Grievance Nurses with Patient Care Assignments

SNA's grievance against the Hospital regarding Lead Nurses and patient care assignments will be presented to an arbitratior in a hearing on June 3rd.

The Hospital continues to violate the SNA contract as shifts in various departments are not staffed with a Lead Nurse in addition to the Staff Nurses required to meet ratio regulations. Most recently this has occurred on 3West NOCs and 2Center East, all shifts. We've also been informed that there are weekend shifts when many departments do not have core staffing scheduled. This makes violating contract stipulations for staffing more likely.

Please continue to keep us informed of the dates/shifts when staffing does not allow the Lead Nurse to be in addition to staffing per ratios. You may call the SNA Message line 575-8853 to report.

Lift Team

The SNA Board is deeply concerned about the layoff of the Lift Team. We are worried that Staff Nurses are at increased risk for injury without a Lift Team to assist in patient mobility.

Members of administration have stated that there is data showing that the Lift Team did not decrease the number of employee injuries.

Employee injury data shows that instituting a Lift Team did decrease the number and severity of employee injuries. When the Lift Team was combined with more available equipment (eg; Slipp sheets, Vanderlift) and educations of employees concerning safe patient mobility, both the number and severity of injuries decreased appreciably.

It is useful to note that the full compliment of Lift Team staff was seldom operational. Available positions were not always filled and until the Lift Team had a dedicated phone, they were difficult to reach.

Further, we have no idea of the number of injuries that were prevented by the assistance of the Lift Team as we did not count the number of times they assisted with moving/positioning patients as potential injury situations.

Members of the Injury Prevention Committee have been informed that discussions with members of Administration concerning the layoff of the Lift Team are continuing.

The SNA Board continues to strategize our response to this risk to Staff Nurses. However, we have communicated our strong objection to the elimination of the Lift Team.

Benefit Accrual of CES Shift

Upcoming in the next newsletter—

After we have discussions with members of administration concerning contract language that indicates that ETO/sick leave accrues for all CES hours. The SNA Board's analysis of this contract language includes benefit accrual for CES shifts that are also overtime (over 80 hours per pay period or 40 hours per week for 12 hour shift nurses). Currently, Nurses working CES shifts that are also overtime do not accrue benefits on these hours because of less specific contract language regarding benefit accrual.

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STAFF NURSES' ASSOCIATION
Message Line: 575-8853
Fax: 575-8138

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© Staff Nurse's Association 2008