Albany Med, nurses reach deal on contract
Choice to unionize in 2018 finally leads to vote on agreement
Healthcare workers and their families listen as supporters of New York State Nurses Association speak in front of Albany Medical Center Sept. 7 in Albany. The fight helped nurses secure a new labor contract Wednesday.
Albany Medical Center has reached an agreement with its nurses on a new labor contract after more than three years of intense negotiations that at times devolved into public disputes and charges of unionbusting.
Albany Med President and CEO Dennis Mckenna confirmed that an agreement had been reached Wednesday in a video posted to the hospital’s Youtube page. A two-day vote on the agreement was scheduled to begin Wednesday, with nearly 2,000 nurses eligible to participate.
“I’m pleased to announce that after three years of negotiations,
Albany Med and the New York State Nurses Association have come to an agreement on a proposed contract,” Mckenna said. “Many of the terms reflect the proposal we have presented to the union ... This agreement reflects our fundamental and consistent principles of fairness to our nurses and all our employees — quality, fiscal responsibility and safety.”
The agreement was negotiated
by hospital management and a bargaining committee made up of nurses and representatives from NYSNA.
“We congratulate every nurse at Albany Med, who persisted in strengthening the union and fighting for a fair union contract in the face of so many obstacles, including the COVID-19 pandemic,” the union said in a statement. “We are incredibly thankful for the support we received along the way from our patients, community, faith, labor and elected supporters, who joined us in solidarity. NYSNA believes a strong union contract that gives nurses a voice is essential in providing safe, quality care to our patients and community.”
According to Mckenna, terms of the new contract include: Nurses will receive 1.5 percent annual guaranteed raises with up to an additional 1.5 percent annual merit-based raises. On-call compensation would increase from $2.50 to $3 per hour in the first year of the contract, $3.25 in the second year, and $3.50 in the third year. Weekend and shift differentials would increase, with Tier 1 and Tier 2 float pool differentials growing by 0.5 percent. A third tier would be created with a differential of 12 percent for nurses with competencies in three or more service lines. A new differential of $1 per hour would be paid to nurses who accept charge duty. Annual health insurance premium increases would be capped at $5 per month for individual coverage and $10 per month for family coverage. Nurses who refer a new nurse employee to Albany Med will receive a $1,000 bonus if the new hire stays for one year.
NYSNA said the contract also includes staffing grids that outline safe staffing numbers for each unit in the hospital. The grids will serve as a template for future staffing negotiations, they said.
Mckenna made a point of highlighting that the contract allows nurses to opt into union membership. Those who do must pay dues, he said — adding that those who don’t would still be covered by the terms of the contract.
“Once the contract is ratified, all nurses who are working at Albany Med today — regardless of whether they signed a union membership card in the past — will need to decide if they wish to be in the union,” he said. “If you have signed a union card in the past you may choose to not sign one going forward. That is your choice. And for nurses at Albany Med who never signed a card and all future nurses at Albany Med, this is their choice as well.”
NYSNA will circulate membership cards if and when the vote is ratified, he said.
Albany Med nurses first voted to unionize in April 2018 following a long campaign of starts and stops that dated back to the turn of the new millennium. Nurses voted to be represented by NYSNA, the state’s largest nurses union, by a 2-1 margin but the vote remains contentious to this day — with a small faction of nurses still attempting to gather enough petition signatures to overturn the election.
Nurses who favored unionization said they were tired of having their complaints about shortstaffing, pay and health benefits go ignored year after year. Many felt the pay offered by Albany Med was not competitive with other hospitals in the region and around the state, and said the health care benefits were so pricey that some nurses had to supplement it with insurance from the state health exchange.
The result was low morale, burnout and high turnover — resulting in high patient loads for the nurses who remained behind, they said.
Additionally, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, nurses protested against the repeated use of sterilized but already-worn N95 masks, which was mandated by management in an effort to preserve supplies. The masks became dirty, degraded and ineffective from repeated wear, they argued. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration agreed and fined the hospital over $40,000 for failing to protect its nurses.
“They’re putting our lives at risk, and it’s not fair to us,” Mary-elizabeth Moshier, an operating room nurse, told the Times Union in December 2020.
The drawn-out nature of the contract negotiations and longstanding tensions between pro- and antiunion factions at the hospital caused a number of internal disputes to end up in the public eye over the years.
Immediately after the vote to unionize, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ordered the state Labor Department to investigate allegations of threats, coercion and other unionbusting efforts by management. NYSNA also filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board alleging unfair labor practices, and organized numerous rallies to raise awareness around nurses’ staffing concerns.
Last winter, short-staffing and safety concerns related to the pandemic escalated to the point that nurses voted to move forward with a strike. The one-day event drew hundreds of nurses and their supporters, which included local elected officials and dignitaries, to the streets outside the hospital. Nurses who participated in the strike were not allowed to return to work for three days, and chastised Mckenna for publicly accusing them of abandoning their patients during the height of the pandemic.
Several days later, Mckenna accused the union of hiring a billboard truck to follow his 10-year-old son’s bus to school — a claim the union denied.