Nurses with Good Samarian Regional Medical Center in Corvallis have reached a tentative three-year contract agreement with their employer.
The agreement came after a marathon 20-hour negotiating session Tuesday night into Wednesday. It comes after nurses at Good Samaritan worked more than six months without an agreement.
Chris Carmichael is a nurse with Good Samaritan and served on the bargaining team. “It’ll be a huge relief to be able to present this to our membership and let them know that we’ve achieved some really great accomplishments throughout this process,” she said.
Carmichael said a key element to the tentative contract is a new staffing policy meant to reduce the need for mandatory overtime shifts. The roughly 500 nurses in the union will vote on the agreement soon, with, with results expected to be announced by February 10.
"We wouldn't have been able to do this without support from the community, so we want to say thank you to everybody that wrote in to the newspaper, everybody that showed up to picket with us, and everybody that called the hospital on our behalf," said Carmichael.
Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center CEO Becky Pape praised the tentative deal. "We believe this is a fair contract that clearly meets the needs of our patients, nurses and community," she said.
