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Candlelight Vigil for Forum Workers Held April 9th

Over 100 local clergy, politicians, labor activists, and the community came out to support Forum Hospital employees during these uncertain financial times.

The vigil included five unions and several local politicians. It took place April 9th at the North Side Campus Gypsy Lane Entrance.

New York Nurses Celebrate Landmark Legal Settlement for Fair Compensation to Improve Staffing

Click here for the full story. Highlights from the New York Times:

A hospital network in the Albany area has agreed to pay $1.25 million to settle a class-action antitrust lawsuit in which nurses asserted that hospitals in the area had illegally conspired to hold down their wages.

The settlement with the network, Northeast Health, based in Troy, N.Y., was the first to be reached in a series of related antitrust lawsuits that nurses have filed in Chicago, Detroit, Memphis and San Antonio.

The nursing arm of the Service Employees International Union helped gather information for the lawsuit. Cathy Glasson, a nurse in the union’s Nurse Alliance, called the settlement a breakthrough for nurses. “For too long,” she said, “hospitals cut corners when it came to valuing the hard work of nurses.”

CRMC Bargaining Survey

If you are a SEIU 1199 member at CRMC, please click Here to take our bargaining survey.

SEIU's Newest Hospital Members

Service & skilled maintenance workers at Community Health Partners in Lorain, Ohio, make important gains in first contract

In 1999 Registered Nurses at Community Health Partners Hospital in Lorain, Ohio, formed a union with SEIU District 1199. Almost ten years later, many of their coworkers now join them as union brothers and sisters with a voice on their job and the protections and guarantees of a union contract.

Four hundred employees at Community Health Partners in Lorain, Ohio, a Catholic Healthcare Partners hospital, are now members of SEIU District 1199 after ratifying their first contract in early October. The new union members include patient care associates, nursing unit secretaries, phlebotomists, utilization review LPNs, medical records staff, housekeepers, dietary staff, skilled maintenance employees and others organized in December 2007 through a unique agreement between SEIU and Catholic Healthcare Partners. That agreement allowed for workers to make a decision about joining District 1199 free from the conflict and high-pressure atmosphere that often accompanies traditional organizing campaigns.

Contract highlights include:

• A wage scale that rewards years of service, with guaranteed cost of living adjustments in every year of the contract. Some employees will receive pay increases of up to 19% over the next three years to bring them up to scale. Everyone in the bargaining unit will receive at least 10.5% in raises and bonuses over the life of the contract.

• Improvements to health insurance. A reduction in the deductible by more than 50% and an improvement in co-insurance from 80% to 90% for services not available at the hospital.

• Many other improvements, including modest gains in retirement contributions, protection from subcontracting for all employees, limitations on mandatory overtime, seniority rights in job bidding and layoffs and recalls, protection against arbitrary discipline, and many other protections and processes to make workers' voices heard, including an excellent grievance procedure.

The union's 30-member negotiating committee also fought off proposed management changes to overtime policies, elimination of weekend-only positions, takeaways in holiday scheduling, and major increases in health care costs.

Congratulations to the service and skilled maintenance employees from your RN colleagues, and all of your other union brothers and sisters in SEIU District 1199!

Hospital Division - Who We Are

We are 5,500 hospital workers – consisting of registered nurses, LPNs, technical workers, skilled maintenance and support staff -- working at 15 hospitals in Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky.

We are part of SEIU District 1199, the largest and fastest growing healthcare union in our three states, with more than 34,000 members in healthcare, social service and the public sector.

The Hospital Division of SEIU District 1199 is part of SEIU Healthcare, the nation’s largest and fastest-growing healthcare union. SEIU Healthcare is comprised of more than one million healthcare workers across the United States, including more than 400,000 nurses and other hospital staff.

In today’s world of healthcare, the financial bottom line has become more important than patients’ needs. Understaffing makes it hard to provide the highest quality care. Stagnating wages and costly health benefits lower standards for hospital workers everywhere. Now more than ever, healthcare workers need a strong voice to advocate on behalf of our patients and ourselves. That is why we, as a healthcare union, are leading the way to organize all hospital workers into one union and fix our broken healthcare system.