We have finished our third week of negotiations. During the first week, management presented a burdensome and concessionary proposal. We presented our platform for the kind of changes Michigan Medicine nurses need to see to keep our patients safe.
This week, we mainly focused on making proposals on two areas that are linked: contractually enforceable staffing ratios and putting an end to mandatory overtime.
Mandating overtime is dangerous practice. We need management to staff appropriately from the start. MNA-UMPNC's comprehensive proposal is to eliminate mandatory overtime and to improve our staffing ratios. Click here to see our proposed ratios. We need a solution for the long term, and we hope that management takes it seriously.
We also shared the concerns we have been hearing from nurses about multi unit positions. We believe that the employer has been posting far too many multi unit positions and that this practice could jeopardize safe patient care. We want to value the specialty care that nurses can provide and avoid the dangerous corporate mindset that “a nurse is a nurse is a nurse.” We hope that Michigan Medicine would share this goal with us and put patient care before their bottom line.
It is important to understand that we are just in the initial weeks of negotiations. Many more topics will be discussed, including wages. We have stated that MNA-UMPNC wages must outpace inflation, be competitive enough to recruit new nurses, and reward our frontline nurses for their dedication. In two weeks, we will meet with Michigan Medicine compensation officials to discuss improving the pay scale for Nurse Practitioners. Our analysis shows a troubling disparity across the current NP salaries that needs to be addressed.
We are hoping that management chooses to work collaboratively, but we are also preparing for if they decide to ignore what nurses need. Please sign up to the be a Communication Team Leader by clicking here to take a key step in winning the contract we need.