1,200 Adirondack Hospital Workers Win New Contract

Twelve hundred 1199SEIU members at Champlain Valley Physician's Hospital ratified a new three-year contract on May 1. For the first time, the deal includes the 1199 Pension Fund in place of the employer’s old defined benefit plan.
Also included in the agreement were annual wage increases of three percent, with the possibility of up to an extra half-of-a-percent the second and third years of the contract, based on the patient satisfaction scores the facility receives.
Workers will also receive a one percent bonus this year on top of the wage increase. Improvements were also made in on call pay, shift differential and bereavement leave. A brand new weekend differential was added as well.
The issue that dominated these negotiations was the pension. Long before negotiations began, the hospital management announced that it needed to discontinue the old single employer defined benefit pension plan. Management insisted the workers should accept the defined contribution plan that NYSNA had accepted a few months earlier. But the bargaining committee and the rest of the members at CVPH were just as determined that they wanted to end up with the 1199 Pension Plan, a secure pension benefit that would guarantee their future.
"This is a win-win for both the 1199 membership and for CVPH,” says Roger James, an 1199SEIU Delegate at the facility. “We are now able to provide a great pension benefit from SEIU to all our members and offer an affordable plan that would help the hospital financially as well as improving recruitment and retention of qualified individuals."