SF, public-health nurses tentatively agree to new contract

San Francisco’s public-health nurses union reached a tentative agreement on a new contract with The City to avoid a possible strike .

SEIU Local 1021, which represents the nearly 2,300 nurses who work for the San Francisco Department of Public Health , said that 99.5% of its members voted nearly in favor of authorizing the strike due to the lack of progress in bargaining sessions.

Union officials said the new contract, which a majority of members must ratify, will address systemwide staffing issues, raise wages and reduce the department’s reliance on contracting work to temporary, part-time nurses. The contract was set to expire at the end of June.

“Our nurses sent a strong collective message to the City of San Francisco and the Department of Public Health,” union president Heather Bollinger said in an emailed statement. “We will do what it takes to give our patients the quality and continuity of care they deserve.”

“While we are encouraged by the gains in this tentative agreement, we plan to remain engaged and diligent to ensure that the city honors the promises it has made,” she added.

Bollinger said that the new contract calls for the department to add 47 new registered-nurse positions. It also provides opportunities for nurses currently working on temporary, per diem bases to become permanent, full-time nurses. The department will reduce contracting out work with the help of “mechanisms for checks and balances” that the union didn’t specify.

"We’re pleased that we’ve reached tentative agreements with all the labor unions that had open contracts,” a spokesperson for San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s office wrote in a statement Tuesday. A number of unions’ contracts were set to expire at the start of July, when The City would be in the full swing of budget season.

“A lot of hard work has gone into these negotiations, particularly over the last several weeks, and we look forward to these agreements being fully ratified,” the spokesperson continued. “These agreements will ensure our workforce can continue to deliver the critical City services our residents rely on."

Public-health nurses raised several points of dissatisfaction throughout their three months of bargaining with The City. In addition to citing problems with hiring and retaining employees, members said they wanted to reduce pay discrepancies between The City’s public-health department and private institutions.

“We have been desperate for resources to improve patient care and [nurses'] working conditions for years — long before we went to the bargaining table in February,” Jennifer Esteen, the SEIU 1021 SF Community RN chapter president, said in a statement. “While it’s unfortunate that it took a landslide strike vote to get SFPDH management to take our issues seriously, we are pleased that we were finally able to reach an agreement.”

In addition to the tentative agreement creating 47 new roles for registered nurses, the Department of Public Health previously told The Examiner that it has hired 166 new nurses since December and planned to hire an additional 50 nurses by June 30.

“In the long run the best thing for our patients and our city is a robust healthy staffing base,” Bollinger said. “We believe this contract begins to move us in that direction.”