Nurses reach deal with FRHG?

Nurses will vote Sept. 3 on a tentative contract reached after meetings between representatives of the Fremont-Rideout Health Group and the California Nurses Association.

"It isn't exactly the contract we were hoping for," Heather Avalos, a nurse at Rideout Memorial Hospital in Marysville said Tuesday. "But it is a strong foundation to build on."

The apparent breakthrough comes more than a year after talks broke down when the nurses bargaining team turned down Fremont-Rideout's "last, best and final" offer in January 2008. Nurses also staged three brief strikes during the height of the dispute.

Talks resumed earlier this year following a ruling by a federal administrative law judge that management must bargain with the union.

Avalos is on the seven-member bargaining team representing nurses during contract talks. The nurses bargaining unit supports the pact and Avalos said she anticipates its approval.

Fremont-Rideout spokeswoman Tresha Moreland could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon.

Liz Jacobs, a spokeswoman for the California Nurses Association, said of the tentative pact that "the nurse bargaining team believes they made substantial economic progress."

"It's time to settle," Jacobs said. "It's time to move on."

The contract includes a professional practice committee to provide an independent voice on patient care, Jacobs said, as well as improvements in nurse pensions.

The court order directed Fremont-Rideout back to the bargaining table following a dispute over whether the CNA still had majority support among Fremont-Rideout's nurses.

When negotiations restarted, CNA proposed a new "modified membership" system considered a step back from the union's longstanding request for a closed-shop system. That system would allow nurses to opt out of the union and its payments yet retain all members' benefits, except the right to vote in union elections.

There was no indication whether that system is a part of the tentative contract.

The union at the time of the restart of talks also said it had reached tentative agreements on 20 contract points the hospital group had proposed.

Fremont-Rideout employs about 450 nurses. The union was voted in three years ago to represent RNs in contract negotiations. A separate group, Nurses for Self-Representation, opposes the CNA representing nurses at the hospitals in Yuba City and Marysville.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Ryan McCarthy at 749-4707 or rmccarthy@appealdemocrat.com.