Union nurses at Maine Medical Center (MSNA/NNU) have successfully pressured hospital management to restore paid leave benefits hospital management unilaterally took away in December. As part of the agreement, MMC administration has restored nurses’ paid parental, bereavement, jury duty, witness and military leaves and included additional benefits to their collective bargaining agreement.
Paid leave benefits will be retroactive to December 2022 so nurses who previously used personal time off or went unpaid to cover their leaves will be reimbursed, according to Maine Medical Center.
The hospital sparked public outrage after it terminated unionized nurses’ paid leave for bereavement, jury duty, parental leave and military service, but not for non-union employees in December. Nurses reported that managers told them these benefits were ending because they joined the union.
“We are absolutely thrilled to have back our paid leave that we were always entitled to keeping, but that the hospital chose to take away from us,” said Mary Kate O’Sullivan, a registered nurse, Maine State Nurses’ Association union steward and member of the collective bargaining team. “We finally won it back without making any concessions."
Maine Med told the Portland Press Herald that additional benefits in the agreement include some scheduling perks for senior nurses and providing time-and-a-half for salaried nurses who pick up extra shifts in their departments.
“We’re not going to forget the things that management does to us, but I think now they realize when they take things away from us, we’re not going to stop fighting until we get them back,” O’Sullivan added.
The nurses waged a two-month campaign to protest the cuts, including delivering a basket of coal to Maine Med CEO Jeff Sanders at Christmas time and hanging posters to educate the public on the issue in hundreds of businesses around Greater Portland.
“Getting the community involved was important to keep public pressure on management,” O’Sullivan said. “We sent a really clear message to Maine Med – the same way we will always fight for our patients, we’re going to fight for each other. I think they know they can’t mess with us the same way anymore.”