Press Release

Registered Nurses at SSM-Saint Louis University Hospital Reach Tentative Agreement on New Contract

Includes Significant Gains that Will Improve Patient Care

Registered nurses and hospital administrators have reached a tentative agreement on a new contract covering 660 RNs in the bargaining unit at SSM-Saint Louis University Hospital in St. Louis, Mo.

The RNs, affiliated with the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU), say the agreement includes significant improvements and workplace protections that will enhance their ability to provide quality patient care. This is the first pact nurses have negotiated with SSM-Saint Louis University's new owner, SSM Health, a Catholic chain that operates in Wisconsin, Illinois, Oklahoma and Missouri. Nurses also affiliated with NNOC/NNU at Des Peres Hospital, part of Tenet Health, are currently in negotiations.

"We are so pleased to have reached an agreement that addresses the critical staffing and workplace safety issues.  Everyone will benefit from these provisions - our patients, visitors, healthcare workers, and the community," said Brendan Gibbons, RN

"This agreement will allow St. Louis University Hospital to recruit and retain the best registered nurses in the St. Louis area.  We are thrilled to recommend ratification in voting sessions next week," said Paul Holland, RN.

"Nurses throughout the hospital worked very hard to achieve these goals - safe patient care, a safe and healing hospital environment for our patients and for workers, and wages and benefits that will recruit and retain RNs," said Marchelle Vernell Bettis, RN.

Key features in the tentative pact include staffing improvements to promote patient safety, economic improvements to promote retention of experienced RNs and recruitment of new nurses, and critical health and safety training in safe patient handling, infection prevention and violence de-escalation and prevention.

Highlights of the contract include:

  • Safe staffing improvements including: charge nurses will not take a patient assignment assuring they are available to provide assistance and resources when needed, and a requirement that RNs receive eight hours of rest after working a call shift before returning to work. This allows exhausted nurses to rest rather than provide patient care when too fatigued to do so safely.
  • Stepped up health and safety provisions including training in safe-patient handling, infection prevention and de-escalation and prevention of workplace violence.
  • Economic gains to help with nurse recruitment and retention that include raises that average 12 percent and range up to 21 percent over the term of the three-year contract and achievement of a wage scale that rewards RN years of experience. 
  • Improved retirement plan benefit.
  • Maintenance of all health insurance benefit plans, without reduction in coverage or greater cost to employees.
  • Improved ability for nurses to advocate for their patients and themselves, including a strengthened grievance procedure for disputes.