Paid time off, which combines sick leave and vacation time, has emerged at the major sticking point in negotiations between Queen's Medical Center and its 800 striking nurses. Queen’s, nurses trade blame
for failed talksPaid time off is a sore point
on both sides of the tableBy Lyn Danninger
ldanninger@starbulletin.comAfter talks broke down Thursday night, the Hawaii Nurses Association claimed it had tried to clear issues off the table where agreement could be reached more easily before moving on to more contentious areas.
"We took the wage package they advertised and agreed to that," said Queen's nurse negotiator Bill Richter. "We also accepted a number of other compensation issues that were in their Dec. 16 proposal. We went through it and said we would agree to the majority of the proposal. But they rejected it because we refused to accept the paid time off component," he said.
Queen's Hospital officials conceded the hospital's paid time off proposal is not up for negotiation.
Dan Jessop, Queen's executive vice president and chief operating officer, and Gail Tiwanak, Queen's director of marketing and communications, said sick time for nurses at Queen's is twice the national average of all health care workers. Paid time off helps reduce those levels and reduces the need for mandatory overtime, they said.
Sue Scheider, director of collective bargaining for Hawaii Nurses Association said the nurses are upset about the proposed changes to sick leave benefits because nurses are more vulnerable to illness or injury than other professionals.
"It's just not appropriate for people doing direct patient care who are exposed to illnesses all the time," she said.
The way paid time off works, according to Scheider, is a portion of an employee's annual sick time allotment, about five days in the Queen's proposal, is combined with an employee's vacation days and available for immediate use.
The remaining sick leave, about seven days a year plus accrued time, is placed in an extended leave bank. Those days are only accessible if an employee is out sick for more than three 8-hour shifts in a row. So employees who are only out a day or two, but multiple times over the course of the year, wind up dipping into their vacation time to get paid for their absence, she said.
Jessop said the hospital could not accept a previous union counter proposal that nurse absenteeism be examined for two years to see whether the paid time off scheme is necessary.
He pointed to the cost of conducting such a study and also the difficulty in agreeing on its results. He also said that, for confidentiality reasons, the hospital could not share information about the use of sick leave by specific individuals.
No new talks have been scheduled between Queen's and negotiators.
Tiwanak said the hospital is near full and has brought in some additional replacement nurses. The total number of replacement nurses now working at Queens is around 340, Jessop said.
Queen's Medical Center
Hawaii Nurses Association