St. Charles Hospital nurses reach tentative deal with 20.5% wage increase, as potential strike looms

With a potential strike looming, St. Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson has reached a tentative deal with nurses over staffing, salary increases and other issues, the nurses’ union said Monday.

The New York State Nurses Association said it reached the proposed agreement late Saturday night. The hospital's nearly 300 nurses will vote Tuesday on whether to approve the contract.

The agreement includes an average pay increase of 20.5% over the three-year contract, expedited enforcement of nurse-to-patient staffing ratios, improved retiree health benefits, increased education benefits and Juneteenth and Martin Luther King Jr. Day holidays, NYSNA said.

The contract specifies that each nurse will care for a maximum of six patients on medical/surgical units and two patients in critical care, and it allows 60 days to resolve disputes instead of 90 days under the previous contract, said Lisa Eppelsheimer, an emergency department nurse who serves on NYSNA's executive committee at St. Charles.

"I've been a nurse at St. Charles for 26 years, and when I triage in the ER, patients say that they choose St. Charles for the personal, compassionate experience they get, so we wanted the nurses to be able to continue to provide that to the patients," said Eppelsheimer, 48, who lives in Wading River. 

The proposed contract's wage increases of 6%, 6% and 5% in each of the next three years, plus increased pay based on years of experience, will help attract and retain nurses, and "make the patient ratios more attainable," she said. The across-the-board wage increases plus additional pay for experienced nurses brings the average wage up 20.5% total by the end of the contract term, NYSNA said. 

The hospital has suffered attrition among new and experienced nurses since the pandemic began, and the starting salary of about $90,000 for registered nurses at St. Charles is about $5,000 to $10,000 less than at nearby institutions, union leaders said. 

Nurses at St. Charles have been working without a contract since March 31. The union held a strike authorization vote last week, with 99.6% of participating nurses voting to approve a potential strike. On Friday, contract talks started at about 7 a.m. and lasted until late at night, Eppelsheimer said. Shortly before midnight Friday, the nurses' executive committee delivered a notice to hospital management, alerting them that a strike would begin in 10 days, she said.

"It's not something we took lightly," she said. "But at that point, we felt it was necessary to let them know that we were going to stick together, and we were committed to getting these ratios in place that were appropriate for the nurses to provide care to the patients in a safe way."

Rockville Centre-based Catholic Health, in a statement, said “St. Charles Hospital is pleased to have reached a tentative agreement that reflects the hospital’s commitment to our nurses. The tentative agreement ensures that our nurses continue to be supported with competitive salary increases and staffing improvements.  Our nurses are vital to ensuring the communities we serve have access to the highest levels of care, and we are grateful for their dedication to our patients.”

 NYSNA, the largest nurses' union in New York, has more than 42,000 members. It represents nurses at St. Joseph Hospital in Bethpage, where nurses signed a new contract in April with pay increases of 6%, 6% and 5% over three years, and at St. Catherine of Siena Hospital in Smithtown, where the union's contract will expire July 31.

At Northwell Health’s South Shore University Hospital in Bay Shore, NYSNA members voted to approve a new contract in February that raised their salaries 19% over three years and expedited arbitration of staffing disputes, three days before a strike was scheduled to start. In January, nurses at Mount Sinai South Nassau in Oceanside voted to join NYSNA.

By Maura McDermott

maura.mcdermott@newsday.commauramcdermott

Maura McDermott is a reporter on the investigations desk. Since starting at Newsday in 2012, she has also covered real estate and the business of health care.