It's back to the bargaining table for the registered nurses at San Diego’s Sharp HealthCare, whose plan for a three-day strike starting Monday was called off after management offered improvements to their earlier proposal.
"Over the past week, Sharp has made slight improvements in some of their proposals addressing nurse turnover,” said Christina Magnusen, RN, president of Sharp Professional Nurses Network (SPNN), an affiliate of the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP). “Sharp seems to now recognize the need to be in a better position to recruit nurses, and keep them once they’ve spent the money to train and orient them, so they will stay and make a career at Sharp. We remain hopeful that we can more fully tackle this crucial issue and complete the contract."
Negotiations resumed Tuesday.
The key issue – nurse recruitment and retention – has been the sticking point as the nurses contend that inadequate pay is the cause of high turnover at the Southern California hospital chain. More than 500 nurses have left the company in just the first nine months of this year because hourly pay is $8 to $15 less than what other nurses earn at area health organizations.
Talks to craft a contract that addresses such concerns, and others, have been going on since July. In October, more than 300 nurses and allies gathered in solidarity with Sharp Healthcare nurses at the San Diego Convention Center.
A 10-day strike notice demonstrated to management that the nurses were committed to resolving the recruitment and retention problem, and ending what the nurses said was Sharp’s repeated violations of federal labor law, including prematurely abandoning negotiations.