REGION 5 NURSES — The PEF Region 5 Nurses Committee takes time out at last year’s lobby day in Albany for a photo op with their state legislators — Sen. Tom Libous and Assembly Member Clifford Crouch.

Differentials too discriminatory, divisive
PEF nurses call for pay equity

By SHERRY HALBROOK
Basic pay for state nurses is woefully inadequate, something PEF has been telling the state for years.

However, instead of raising the salary grades for all of its nurses across-the- board, the state waits until it can no longer recruit or retain them at a particular worksite and then boosts the hiring rate or pays extra money to nurses already on staff in the form of “geographic,” or shift differentials.

These differentials — annually $4,500 geographic pay and $5,000 to $7,000 for working the evening and late shifts, respectively — are narrowly earmarked for specific job titles at specific worksites. 

For example, nurse 2s working for Broome Developmental Disabilities Services at its central facility receive the extra pay, while their counterparts doing the same work for the same employer, but in other counties or settings, may not receive it.

“This is a Band-Aid approach, at best, said PEF Region 5 Coordinator Mary Twitchell. “And in Region 5, where the differentials have been in effect for about two years, it’s become very divisive. 

“We’re glad to see many of our nurses getting a much-deserved boost to their pay, but the other nurses deserve it too,” she said.

Region 5 — Broome, Chenango, Delaware, Otsego, Tioga and Tompkins counties — isn’t the only one where nurse unity is chafed by the uneven blessings of pay differentials.
“This has been a very sore subject for our nurses, too,” said PEF Region 9 Coordinator Neila Cardus. “Here in the Mid-Hudson Valley, we have been trying for years to get equitable pay for all nurses.”

Kate Gregory, a registered nurse who operates the Employee Health Service nursing station at the Binghamton State Office Building, chairs the PEF Region 5 Nurses Committee which became so concerned about the situation, she said, that it has mobilized a petition, letter-writing and lobbying campaign calling on state lawmakers and officials to correct the inequities. The nurses also are distributing stickers calling for “geographic equality.”

Gregory said the nurses decided to mobilize around the issue, after PEF’s efforts to resolve the matter through the joint labor-management committee at the state Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities (OMRDD) were unsuccessful. 

“Giving the differential to some and not to others is unfair and implies one nurse is more valuable than another,” Gregory said. One negative effect, she said, has been to disrupt the state workforce in the region.

“About two dozen state nurses at various agencies, out of several hundred nurses in our region, are excluded from receiving the differential,” Gregory said. “Now, some of them are transferring into state facilities where they will get it.”

Patricia Siefert is one of those nurses. She left her job working with mentally retarded and developmentally disabled people in the community to join the staff of the Oxford Veterans’ Home.

“I enjoyed working for OMRDD,” Siefert said. “I left because most of the other state nurses in Chenango County received the differential. Why were we the select few not to receive it?”
“The OMRDD nurses who work in the field are an amazing group of people, and it’s very unjust to pay them less,” Twitchell said. “Sometimes they have to drive many miles through the mountains to get from one client to another. Many of them take calls at all hours of the night and on weekends, because they know how much the fragile health of their clients depends on them. They are on-call, not by law, but by conscience.”

Communicator Homepage March 04

Inside This Issue
Features
PEF tells lawmakers to keep
Court rules grievance denial
Battle for Middletown Psych Center
PEF rejects state’s contract offer
Take the contract pledge
Saving Camp McGregor
Shadow agencies undercutting trust
Parole rule changes spark concerns

Departments
President's Message
Member's Mailbag
PS&T Contract Update
Nurses' Station
Member Mobilization
Health Notes
Retirees In Action
Back Cover Ad
PEF Membership Benefits &Travel

Union Matters
PEF victory allows Downstate nurses
State lagging to help its 9/11 ‘heroes’
Struggle to save members at OCFS
WTC recovery worker still sick, hurting
PEF political volunteers get out the vote
Nurses set Lobby Day for May 4
Mobilizer conference, workshops
Vacant PEF Board seat filled
Attention Veterans

Save these dates:
April 21-25
Somos El Futuro!
The annual weekend conference in Albany of the Caucus of NYS Hispanic and Puerto Rican Legislators
For more information, to volunteer, or make reservations for the reception, call Helen Brooks at the PEF Legislative Office, 1-800-724-4997.

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