From today’s San Diego Union-Tribune:
A strike may be brewing at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego after nurses rejected a three-year contract that administration says would have increased the average salary by about 22 percent over the next three years.
Nurses and technical employees represented by United Nurses of Children’s Hospital — an affiliate of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 1699 — voted Tuesday to strike after finding the brokered contract not generous enough.
Katie Langenstrass, UNOCH’s president and a medical and surgical nurse at Rady Children’s, said Wednesday that 91 percent of the bargaining unit’s roughly 1,600 members participated in the vote with 95 percent who voted authorizing a strike at the governing board’s discretion.
While contract negotiations can still continue, labor leadership says the 10-day strike notice required before health care workers may walk off their jobs is likely to arrive soon.
“Although there aren’t exact dates right now, we do feel like things are moving pretty quickly,” Langenstrass said.
Management and workers are making opposite statements about the fairness of the proposed three-year contract brokered during collective bargaining, but rejected by the union rank and file. The deal, both sides seem to agree, would give nurses 8 percent raises in its first year and 4 percent increases in its second and third years. Additional increases to extra pay, such as for working at night, training new workers or acting in a supervisory role, would push the total increase, hospital officials said, to an average of about 22 percent over three years.
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