BID Plymouth Hospital RNs Cast Overwhelming Vote to Ratify New Three-Year Contract that Provides Improvements in Staffing, Wages, and Benefits to Increase Recruitment and Retention of Staff Needed to Ensure Safer Patient Care

PLYMOUTH, Mass., June 4, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The registered nurses of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Plymouth (BID Plymouth), represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, cast an overwhelming vote (nine to one in favor) on Tuesday to ratify a new three-year contract that will provide improvements in staffing, wages and benefits that the nurses sought to ensure the facility's ability to recruit and retain the nurses needed to ensure safe patient care.

The contract was negotiated over a period of eight months (first session held on Oct. 3, 2024) and included the nurses voting on March 20th to authorize a three-day strike. The job action stimulated a more concerted effort by the employer to begin a series of negotiating sessions, ultimately resulting in a tentative agreement on May 15, 2025. The new deal runs from Jan. 1, 2025 through December 31, 2027.

"We are both thrilled and proud to have achieved a contract that addressed what we believe is essential to ensuring we can provide the quality care this community expects and deserves," said Liz Taylor, RN, co-chair of the nurses local bargaining unit with the MNA. "Our members, with the strong support we have received from our community, made a stand for the safety of our patients and the dignity of those who care for them, and we look forward to working with our administration to ensure a bright future for BI Plymouth."

Highlights of the agreement include:

Wages

The contract provides wage increases of between 13 – 27 percent (with an average increase of 21 percent) depending on the nurse's years of service, with the wage hike retroactive to January 2025. It also includes increases in differentials for evenings, weekends and on call pay. The nurses at BI Plymouth were among the lowest paid in the region, which was resulting in the loss of many nurses to better staffed, higher paying facilities. The new wage scale brings the nurses in line with the market to allow improved recruitment and retention of staff. 

Safer Staffing Practices 

The pact includes a number of provisions to improve staffing at the facility, which was a major goal of the nurses throughout this process. It includes contractually guaranteed staffing grids negotiated by the parties that limit the number of patients that can be assigned to a nurse at one time, which cannot be altered for the life of the agreement and ensures that staffing in the maternity unit and post anesthesia care units comply with professional standards of care for those units.

The contract also ensures that the staffing plans to allow for charge nurses on all units to begin their shift without a patient assignment, and mandates the hiring of nurses for the Intensive Care Unit and Clinical Decision Unit to support this critical role for these areas. A charge nurse is an RN on each floor/unit who is responsible for managing all aspects of nursing responsibilities during each shift, from processing patients in and out of the unit, to serving as a liaison with physicians about patient care needs, as well as to be available to help a less experienced nurse with a complex patient, or to take on patient assignments when other staff become overburdened due to an increase admissions.

The agreement also provides stronger protection against the hospital's use of mandatory overtime and the floating of nurses (moving nurses among different units) as an alternative to having appropriate numbers of nurses to provide safe patient care. The contract includes language prohibiting mandatory overtime, except in cases of a state or nationally declared emergency. As to the floating of nurses, it provides for nurses on certain units from being floated under any circumstance and calls for the hiring of nurses to establish a dedicated "float pool of nurses" who are on hand to compensate for unplanned staffing shortages.

The agreement also fought off onerous proposals sought by the employer, including a call to eliminate five holidays, as well as cuts to the nurses' insurance benefit, which would have dramatically increased the cost of insurance for nurses. The nurses have maintained their current holidays and were awarded an additional two personal days through the agreement. They also maintain their health insurance benefit at a comparable rate.

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SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association