Pact Includes improvements in RN staffing with safe limits on nurses’ patient assignments, reasonable wage increases, and benefit protections
Leominster, MASS. – The nurses of Leominster Hospital voted yesterday to ratify a new union contract that was previously negotiated as a tentative agreement on June 30. The contract improves RN-to-patient staffing inside the hospital by limiting nurses’ patient assignments to no more than five patients at a time and also:
- Adds new nursing positions throughout the hospital
- Guarantees that charge nurses, including charge nurses in the hospital’s critical care unit, will not carry a patient assignment
- Protects benefits for all RNs
- Provides nurses with a lump sum bonus of 1 percent and a 2 percent increase over the life of the contract.
The new contract will expire on July 21, 2017.
