Sandpoint nurses file complaint
Nurses at Bonner General Hospital in Sandpoint have filed a national labor board complaint alleging that hospital officials have failed to fairly negotiate terms of a first-ever union contract.
Representatives for more than 110 nurses who voted last year to join the Teamsters Union Local 690 have spent nearly a year working out contract terms. However, their complaint filed this month with the National Labor Relations Board contends that hospital officials have refused to bargain in good faith, in part by failing to set amenable times and dates for negotiation.
“We have made some great progress, but the company will meet only two days a month or only three days a month,” said Val Holstrom, president of Local 690. “We just don’t feel things are moving as quickly as they could.”
So far, union and hospital representatives have worked out more than 80 percent of the language of a new contract, Holstrom said. The final 20 percent concerns wages, which has been more contentious.
A hospital negotiator said that union members had unrealistic expectations about finalizing a new contract after an August 2006 vote to unionize.
“First-time union contracts can often take up to two years to negotiate,” chief negotiator Allen Fry said in a statement. “The fact that 85 percent of the contract has been negotiated in under a year is quite remarkable, and has resulted from the willingness of both parties to work in good faith to reach a resolution.”
Hospital officials have spent 32 hours a month in negotiations, said Sheryl Rickard, chief executive officer.
Wages and benefits are the chief issues now, both sides agreed. Nurses contend that they are paid less than others in the region, including Kootenai Medical Center in Coeur d’Alene and Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, Holstrom said.
But a union proposal would have required Bonner General to come up with $2 million in wages and benefits in the first year of the contract alone, Rickard said.
“While I am the first to recognize the immense value of our registered nurses, the reality is that agreeing to this proposal would be financially impossible for BGH and inequitable for the hospital’s other 300 employees,” she said in a statement.