Nurses’ pay remains core issue in state health care
By NANCY WOLFF
Frustration with the state’s Band-Aid approach to boosting nurses’ pay is building among PEF nurses.
The state’s recent approval of increased geographic pay differentials and hiring rates for some nurses in the lower Hudson Valley have spurred complaints and inquires from PEF members who are not receiving them.
Some nurses who did not get the differentials are reporting that they and their co-workers are looking for transfers to nearby state worksites where nurses did get them.
Rather than correcting staff shortages, awarding the pay boosts to too narrow a group simply shifts the problem from one site or agency to another.
No direct role for PEF
The state uses geographic differentials to make its pay more competitive in specific labor markets where it has serious recruitment and retention problems for particular job titles and shifts.
It’s up to agencies to request the pay boosts and prove they are needed.
Neither state law nor the PS&T contract gives PEF a role in establishing these differentials or an opportunity to negotiate for them.
The union can neither make a state agency request geographic differentials, nor make the state director of classification and compensation grant them, nor force the state budget director to approve them.
Reallocate all titles
While PEF supports the differentials as the best immediate opportunity to improve the pay for some nurses, it deplores the fact that many others who are just as skilled, dedicated, experienced and qualified are left out.
A much better approach would be for the state to simply upgrade all state nursing titles across the board as PEF has requested in a formal Nurse Reallocation Proposal.
Salary data PEF has provided to the state Department of Civil Service in the Reallocation Proposal shows that even a two-grade advancement for most direct-care nursing titles would raise state pay to a level that is more competitive with other direct-care nurses.
With the US facing a critical shortage of 126,000 nurses today and a projected shortfall of 434,000 RNs by 2020, the state must do more than just continue to approve divisive and disruptive differentials to specific titles and shifts at scattered worksites, if it wants to recruit and retain nurses at state facilities.
Chronic nursing vacancies exacerbate the problems of short staffing and mandatory
overtime which, in turn, cause more nurses to leave their jobs or even the profession.
Keep the pressure on
Meanwhile, PEF continues to pressure state agencies and the Department of Civil Service to approve both the Reallocation Proposal and the geographic differentials to address nursing recruitment and retention problems.
PEF members should follow the example of nurses’ committees in several regions that have mobilized around this issue, writing and lobbying their legislators and the governor to support improved nurses’ compensation.
You should also keep pressure on your agency to request the pay boosts by keeping nursing pay and staffing issues high on the agendas of your local and statewide labor-management committees.
In recent months, activism by PEF Nurses’ Committees in Regions 5 and 9 succeeded in getting increased geographic differentials approved for some of their titles and worksites.
Their success stems from well organized committees that documented their staffing problems and urged their legislators, agency heads and the governor to support increased geographic differentials and the reallocation of health care titles.
It took months of hard work, mobilization and lobbying, but these regions were ultimately rewarded with better pay for the majority of their nurses.
Equitable pay for all nurses is still a top priority for PEF. Keep the pressure on by continuing to send letters and press your agency and legislators.
For sample letters and more information visit the PEF
Nurses webpage.
The
Communicator July/August 04
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