WMC healthcare workers make thousands less per year than peers at nearby hospitals, seek pay parity
"We hope to gain this without having to strike," the union's contract administrator said, "but you know what? If we have to do it, we have to do it."
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Healthcare workers picketed outside three Hudson Valley hospitals Friday, demanding their employer start paying them as much as their peers at nearby hospitals earn.
The disparity in pay is unacceptable, their union leaders said.
Medical professionals from Mid-Hudson Regional in Poughkeepsie are trying to pressure their superiors at the Westchester Medical Center Health Network into paying them more and fixing staffing shortages.
WMC administrators, they said, are driving a hard bargain.
Dressed in a union shirt and matching feathered boa and holding up her sign along Route 9, nurse Tracey Arrick said she grew up in Poughkeepsie and raised her children here.
She might soon have to make a difficult decision.
1199 SEIU union leaders said base pay for nurses at Mid-Hudson Regional is $47.50 an hour, while hospitals just to the north and south are starting nurses at around $56 an hour, a 15 percent difference.
"This is where I want to stay working," but if the pay raises don't happen and the pension doesn't happen, at some point I have to cut my losses."
The nurses' current contract is up on September 30th.
The union's contract administrator, Dawn Johnson, said that if negotiations are not going well by this fall they might escalate.
"We hope to gain this without having to strike," Johnson said, "but you know what? If we have to do it, we have to do it."
The hospital's technical workers, who just unionized last year, said they told administrators during their first ever bargaining session they are also looking to secure higher pay, a pension program and holiday pay.
They said that in response, administrators told them they were "not an appropriate use of resources," a quote which many employees had on their picket signs.
A public relations professional representing WMC did not respond to a list of questions from News 12 about compensation parity and administrators' alleged response to the technical workers' requests.
"We continue to bargain in good faith with 1199SEIU regarding a new contract and are confident that the progress we are making will result in a fair contract," the spokesperson wrote in response, "that continues to provide competitive compensation, benefits, and a safe and supportive work environment to support our employees.”
Nurses and techs along Route 9 said such an agreement will probably require more public pressure on their bosses.
Nurses and techs from Bon Secours in Port Jervis and Good Samaritan in Suffern also held similar demonstrations outside their workplaces Friday informing the public about the disparity in pay among medical professionals.
