Kaiser Nurses Overwhelmingly OK Pact Calling for Pay Hikes, Cuts in Overtime

A majority of 885 striking nurses at Kaiser Permanente’s Hollywood medical center on Tuesday night overwhelmingly ratified a new contract that will boost wages by 10% to 14% this year and will reduce some overtime payments.

Nurses, who had been on strike for nine weeks, will begin returning to work at the Sunset Boulevard facility today.

A spokesman for Local 535 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents the nurses, said Tuesday night that no final tabulation had been made but that the vote was running 97% in favor of ratification.

The terms of the three-year contract reflected a series of compromises.

Kaiser agreed to a 1990 wage increase higher than its last offer of 7% to 12%. Wage increases in the following two years will be placed 4% above the average rate paid by local hospitals. Nurses had asked for far more--34% over three years.

Kaiser also agreed to the nurses’ demands that they no longer be required to serve food or empty trash.

The contract gradually eliminates expensive overtime benefits. Nurses now earn double time for eight or more consecutive 12-hour days. The union had balked at Kaiser’s insistence on reducing that payment. The compromise leaves the payment untouched this year, gradually reducing it by 1992. Payment of 2 1/2-times normal for more than 12 hours worked in a day was reduced to double time. Some other overtime payments that Kaiser sought to change were left intact.

Nurses with five years’ experience will make $44,256 in the first year of the contract, about the same base wage as has been negotiated with Kaiser by other unions representing registered nurses.

The strike forced a medical center that is regarded as the high-technology jewel of Kaiser’s Southern California hospital network to drastically cut its patient load. Most patients were transferred to other Kaiser facilities or cooperating hospitals. The strike also involved a few dozen employees at an Inglewood clinic, which continued to operate.