Healthcare workers at Stanford Medical Center and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital ratified a new agreement that increases their wages by 15% over the next three years, SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, the workers’ union, said on Friday.

The agreement also increases the hospitals’ minimum wage to $25 per hour and includes several provisions for better working conditions and benefits.

December has been a good month for nurses unions in Northern California. Two weeks ago, the California Nurses Association ratified a new contract with Kaiser Permanente that increased wages by 22.5% over four years, included provisions for improved staffing, and promised to create a new regional committee for equity, diversity and inclusion at each facility.

When that agreement was reached, Kaiser averted what would have been the biggest private sector nurses strike in American history. In the case of Stanford’s new agreement, a strike was avoided there as well.

Earlier this year, Stanford’s healthcare workers participated in a survey about their workplace conditions, said Renée Saldaña, a representative for the union. Over a quarter of respondents reported that their facility was severely understaffed, she declared.

Though their contract wasn’t set to expire until September 2023, a group of Stanford healthcare workers met with their employer to present the survey results. The results also showed that many workers missed their meal breaks and felt pressured to ignore safety protocols because of short staffing.

“Instead of spending its money and energy on fighting its own workers, Stanford did the right thing and provided them with what they need to continue to provide quality patient care,” Saldaña said.

Through a 15% raise over three years, the new agreement takes into consideration the high cost of living in the area, according to SEIU United Healthcare Workers West. Providers in other expensive areas, such as New York City or Miami, may need to follow in Stanford’s footsteps.

“If health systems want to retain and attract new employees to their workforces and ensure there will always be enough qualified staff to take care of patients, they need to properly value and compensate their frontline workers and ensure they feel safe and supported on the job,” Saldaña said.

Even prior to the pandemic, California was facing a massive shortage of healthcare workers — conservative estimates were as many as 65,000 workers annually, Saldaña said. Fighting the pandemic influenced many workers to leave the industry, exacerbating what was already a crisis and turning it into a much more dire problem. Providing benefits that meet workers’ needs will address the crisis by helping retain employees and attract new ones, Saldaña explained.

She said she was heartened to see the success of workers’ efforts at Stanford and Kaiser. In her view, this type of change has been due for a long time.

“Corporations have spent decades stacking the decks in their own favor, making it harder and harder for working people to live with dignity and advocate for themselves,” Saldaña said. “Across the country, workers are exercising their power like we haven’t seen in years — going on strike, quitting bad jobs in record numbers, winning historic contract victories, and demanding the right to form unions. It’s incredibly important that every worker has a voice in their workplace.”

Photo: skynesher, Getty Images