The three-month strike at Butler Hospital that forced the closure of roughly half of the psychiatric hospital’s beds ended as workers voted “overwhelmingly” on Monday to ratify a new contract.
Butler Hospital and the Service Employees International Union 1199 New England announced the settlement Monday night in a joint statement.
“This contract ends the strike and, most importantly, ensures that caregivers can return to their patients,’’ the statement reads. “While this has been a long and challenging process, both sides worked hard throughout negotiations to reach this resolution.”
Butler Hospital is operated by Care New England, the state’s second-largest health system.
The four-year contract includes “immediate” wage increases of at least $3 an hour for every worker, and up to $5 an hour increase for the lowest-paid staff, Ben Degnan, a mental health worker and delegate for the SEIU 1199 NE told The Public’s Radio.
Among the big sticking points in the negotiations, Degnan said, was the union’s insistence that the hospital raise the wages of the lowest-paid workers.
“This is why we put in this work,” Degnan said, “because we got to a place where we feel that this is really going to make a huge difference in every single person’s life.”
The deal amounts to at least a $6,000 wage increase for every full-time employee during the first year of the contract, the union said in a statement Tuesday. By the end of the four-year contract, every current worker will earn at least $20 an hour.
The SEIU 1199NE represents roughly 700 Butler Hospital workers – nurses, mental health workers, dietary and maintenance staff – and another 100 unfilled positions.
Among the issues fueling the strike was a rise in workplace violence. The staffing shortage and higher staff turnover rates, workers said, had left some employees working without proper training, endangering staff as well as patients.
“A big part of the issue with workplace safety was the fact that we could not retain, or fill empty positions because the wages were so low,’’ Degnan said. “So we feel very confident that [the wage increases] will help us retain experienced workers, and will help us attract new workers who really want to work in this field.”
Butler Hospital also agreed to provide financial support for workers injured by workplace violence, including a “time bank” funded by the hospital and union members, that injured workers can draw from to supplement their workers’ compensation, the SEIIU 1199NE said in a statement released Tuesday.
The contract also includes an educational benefit, the union said, worth $600,000 over four years, administered by the SEIU 1199NE Training and Education Fund.
The union said the contract also “maintained benefits and controlled costs” for workers’ Health Savings Account (HSA) health care plans.
The company also agreed to maintain workers’ defined benefit pension plans, or traditional pensions, Degnan, the union delegate said, for all current and new employees. Unlike a traditional pension, the value of a retirement investment account like a 403(b) account fluctuates with changes in the stock market. A traditional pension puts the company on the hook for the full benefit, regardless of shifts in the market and the employer’s investments.
Most of the unionized staff at Butler earn less than $25 an hour, or $50,000 a year, union officials had said, and can’t afford to contribute to a 403(b) plan.
Butler, like other hospitals, is facing declining payments from Medicare, which covers people 65 and older, and additional threatened cuts to Medicaid, the government insurance program for people with low wages and disabilities
Mary E. Marran, Butler’s president and chief operating officer, told The Public’s Radio last month that the hospital is 70% “publicly-funded,” with 45% of its patents paid for through Medicaid, which typically provide the lowest reimbursement rates. The rest of the patients, she said, are on Medicare.
Shortly after the strike began in mid-May, Marran announced that the hospital would cut-off striking workers’ health insurance and hire permanent replacements to fill their jobs. But staffing shortages among health care workers made that challenging. During the first month of the strike, Marran said, the hospital had spent $3.2 million on temporary staffing to keep the hospital operating.
The temporary, out-of-state staff also created challenges for the hospital. State regulators cited Butler in June for allowing an unlicensed medical assistant to insert an intravenous catheter into three patients. Unlike some other states, Rhode Island requires that insertion of an IV catheter only be done by a registered nurse.
The staffing shortages during the strike forced the hospital to close nearly half of its 197 beds, including all 29 beds in its addiction treatment unit.
As of Tuesday, Butler Hospital was advertising 374 job openings on its careers website.
Hospital and union officials said they will be working with the hospital this week on a return-to-work plan that includes re-opening the closed units.
