COLDWATER, MI (WTVB) – The registered nurses union at the Community Health Center of Branch County has a new contract with the hospital. The 3-year agreement covering around 140 RN’s at CHC was ratified by the nurses last week and then approved by the Health Center’s Board of Trustees at their regular monthly meeting Monday night.
The contract includes a wage freeze in the first year of the deal. CHC President and CEO Randy DeGroot says wages are frozen hospital wide for this year. According to DeGroot, the nurses narrowly passed the pact by a 54-49 margin. The RN’s had been working without a contract since the end of September when the old pact expired and the new agreement is retroactive to October 1, 2014. DeGroot explains that in the second and third years of the contract, nurses on the lower end of the current wage scale would get a 3% pay hike while those at the upper end get a 1% increase.
Contract negotiations were apparently slowed this fall by the two sides not knowing the future status of the county owned hospital with CHC having been the subject of a proposed sale to a Tennessee-based health systems corporation. That possible transaction was called off in late November when the Health Center Board recommended to the County Commission that the sale talks be ended and the County Board agreed to drop the matter.
