PORT ANGELES — Olympic Medical Center and one of the hospital’s largest unions have reached a tentative accord in their long-stalled contract talks.
The tentative agreement reached Wednesday was announced in a joint statement by OMC and Service Employees International Union Healthcare 1199NW on Thursday.
The proposed accord is scheduled for votes by hospital commissioners and union members Tuesday — one week after a state Public Employment Relations Commission mediator was slated to begin adjudicating the union’s unfair-labor practices complaint.
Representatives for the hospital, Clallam County’s largest employer, and the union, which represents 363 nurses, service workers and dietary workers — 42 percent of workers at the hospital in Port Angeles — would not release details of the agreement until after the votes Tuesday, they said Thursday in separate interviews.
Left unclear following the announcement was the status of a three-year contract for SEIU that was approved by hospital commissioners Feb. 1 without the union’s consent.
But the two sides indicated they had crossed that hurdle.
“Both the hospital and the nurses and health care workers acknowledge negotiations have been long and contentious and that it is in the best interests of the community to move forward with an agreement,” they said in a statement.
“We’re pleased we can put this behind us and work together to advocate for our patients and for a stable health care environment in our community.”
The special OMC commissioners’ meeting Tuesday will be in the hospital’s Linkletter Hall at a time that had not been determined as of Thursday morning, hospital Assistant Administrator Rhonda Curry said.
The union vote will be followed by the hospital board’s vote, she said.
OMC board Chairman John Miles said Thursday the contract’s details already have been reviewed by a majority of the seven hospital commissioners and that he expects the board will approve the contract.
“Everybody’s been informed of the details,” Miles said. “I’ve spoken with several, and I believe it’s going to be approved.”
“I think everybody’s going to be happy about it, and I think it’s going to have a good outcome.”
SEIU’s present contract expired in October 2010 and talks subsequently broke down over health care benefits and nurses’ staffing levels.
The union filed an unfair-labor-practices complaint against the hospital last summer.
Kitsap County Superior Court Judge M. Karlynn Haberly issued an Aug. 3 injunction to stop an 18-hour union walkout threatened for Aug. 11.
The unfair-labor-practices complaint was amended Feb. 22, three weeks after hospital commissioners approved the three-year contract.
The union alleged the hospital negotiated in bad faith by approving the contract.
The hospital countered that the contract gave SEIU workers the same benefits as other hospital employees, including management, and that most hospitals do not include nurses’ staffing levels in contracts.
Last Friday, March 23, lawyers for the hospital and union sat across from each other with boxes of evidence at their feet.
They were on the brink of publicly airing their differences at a Public Employment Relations Commission hearing being adjudicated by mediator Claire Nickleberry at the Family Medicine Building in Port Angeles.
Before the hearing began, Nickleberry asked the two sides to meet to agree on which evidence they would present at the hearing and almost offhandedly suggested they also could talk about settling those differences.
Nickleberry said in an interview last Friday that unfair-labor-practices hearing protagonists rarely go into settlement talks at that point in the process.
But the two sides did.
So began arduous discussions that stretched through last Friday, last Saturday and this Tuesday and Wednesday.
“Clearly, they were very long days,” Curry said. “I think it’s fair to say we are very pleased.”
Both sides “agreed to withdraw any pending legal actions,” according to the statement.
Asked if the hospital has any pending legal action against the union, spokeswoman Bobby Beeman said in an email, “These details will be discussed at Tuesday’s board meeting.”
SEIU spokeswoman Linnae Riesen did not return a call for comment on whether the union had other pending legal action against the hospital other than the unfair-labor-practices complaint.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladaily
news.com.
