Public sector nurses across San Francisco reached a tentative agreement with the city’s Department of Public Health today, avoiding the possibility of a strike in the summer. That came just days after members of the union representing the nurses, SEIU 1021, voted 99.5 percent to authorize a strike if their demands were not met.
Nurses have been protesting short staffing and security concerns for months, and were seeking salary guarantees and assurances from the city that it would prioritize hiring full-time positions, instead of filling gaps with travel nurses. The nurses’ contract was set to expire at the end of June.
Jennifer Esteen, president of San Francisco’s SEIU 1021 registered nurse chapter, said that the lack of personnel had created both a poor working environment for the nurses and unsafe conditions for patients.
“Some of the patients who walk into our clinics are waiting weeks to see a doctor,” said Esteen. She said some nurses are required to work up to 16-hour mandatory overtime to address short-staffing. “Every single patient who walks in our doors is at risk.”
Esteen said the long hours create a dangerous environment; nurses do not even have time to take a bathroom break, she said. “It is pretty bad. We don’t have enough nurses to assure everyone is safe.”
Esteen said that contract negotiations, which started in February, began moving more quickly after the strike vote. The nurses’ union had earlier said that the city was not coming to the table to begin talks, and had rejected the union’s measures out of hand.
In a statement shared to Mission Local on Thursday May 23, the mayor’s office celebrated the agreement.
“We’re pleased that we’ve reached tentative agreements with all the labor unions that had open contracts. A lot of hard work has gone into these negotiations, particularly over the last several weeks, and we look forward to these agreements being fully ratified. These agreements will ensure our workforce can continue to deliver the critical City services our residents rely on.”
The tentative agreement will guarantee 47 new full-time registered nurse positions at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, Laguna Honda Hospital and community clinics, more opportunities for part-time nurses to become full-time, and a 17.5 percent raise for every nurse who works for the city to be applied over the next three years. Esteen said the union will also receive raw data from the city that will allow it to analyze how many hours nurses are working to better address staffing needs in the future.
Esteen said the raises will help bridge the gap between city-employed nurses and those in the private sector.
“In the region, we were, on average, underpaid by 13 percent,” she said. “By being able to compete with private companies like Kaiser, the city will be able to retain staff.”
Been protesting short staffing for months? For years! As a retired RN for the SFGH for thirty five years safe staffing has been the core problem. Stacks and stacks of documented ‘assignment despite objection’ (taking unsafe assignments mostly due to short staffing) forms filled out and presented to BOS prior to covid just from one department. Years of threatening to strike not for money but for safe staffing levels as the main motivator. It’s a patient safety problem and a nurse mental heath problem and I’m convinced that the bean counters at the County are constantly weighing the amount of medical lawsuit payouts vs salary payouts. No regard for patient safety, patient satisfaction, mandatory overtime, nurse burnout, poor morale, recruitment ( that systematically takes many, many months) and retention. The City and County of SF has always bargained in bad faith. Always. Hero healthcare workers during COVID who risked their lives….empty words. National Nurses Week gets you a scoop of ice cream if your lucky enough to run off with coverage for five minutes to get one.