Mercy Medical, nurses OK pact

Saturday, August 09, 2008
Original Article

SPRINGFIELD - Mercy Medical Center and 300 staff nurses represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association have agreed on a two-year contract.

Under the deal, the nurses will receive a 3.5 percent raise, retroactive to Jan. 1 and a 4 percent raise next Jan. 1. The contract will result in pay for new nurses rising from $27.31 an hour to $29.40 an hour, while nurses with 35 years of experience will see their wages increase from $42.51 an hour to $45.76 an hour.

The sides began negotiations in October.

"We're satisfied with what we got for the time being," Stephen Mikelis, an emergency room nurse and chairman for the association's bargaining unit at the medical center, said this week.

"We're certainly pleased to have reached that agreement," said Mark M. Fulco, vice president for strategy and marketing for the Sisters of Providence Health System, which operates the medical center.

Fulco, who described the medical center's nurses as "top notch," also said: "We were optimistic. ... we were going to reach mutually agreeable terms."

The association, founded in 1903, has more than 23,000 members who work in more than 85 health-care facilities around the state. The association is the largest union of registered nurses in the commonwealth.