Butler Hospital and the union representing more than 700 nurses, mental health workers, dietary and maintenance staff announced Monday that they have reached a tentative agreement to end the three-month-long strike.
“On behalf of both Butler Hospital and members of the bargaining committee representing all job classifications of the hospital, we are pleased to share that a tentative agreement has been reached,’’ reads a joint statement posted on the hospital’s website. “More details will be forthcoming in the coming days.”
The statement was attributed to Butler Hospital’s president and chief operating officer, Mary E. Marran, and Jesse Martin, executive vice president of SEIU1199NE, a hospital spokeswoman said in an email.
Union members are scheduled to vote on the agreement Monday, a union spokesperson confirmed.
The announcement comes a week after it appeared that hopes of a settlement anytime soon had evaporated.
Union leaders said at a news conference last week that they’d agreed to raise members’ insurance premiums by $110 a month. In return, union leaders said, they were asking the hospital for another $1.2 million in wages over four years – about $300,000 a year. The additional wages, they said, were aimed at raising the wages of their lowest-paid staff.
But after a long night of negotiations with a federal mediator, the talks ended without a deal. And Butler Hospital announced that due to short-staffing it was shutting down 29 beds in its addiction treatment unit. That’s in addition to the 70 beds that it had previously closed. The 197-bed hospital is now operating at about half of its capacity.
The hospital has also spent “millions” of dollars to hire temporary replacement staff from out of state, according to Marran.
Leaders of SEIU1199 said earlier this month that management’s July 11 “last, best and final offer” failed to raise the wages of the union’s lowest-paid members, including maintenance workers and dietary staff, who earn less than $20 an hour.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
