CRONA
Committee for Recognition of Nursing Achievement
Area Representatives and Membership Meetings
May 1 and 3, 2007

New Collective Bargaining Agreements
As we start another 3-year term of our collective bargaining agreements, we would like to thank our Area Representatives and the entire membership for your support during the recent negotiations. The strength of CRONA comes from our members. It is this solidarity that will help us continue to advocate for nurses and ultimately our patients.

We also would like to thank the Negotiation Committees, the Negotiating Team, the Ballot and Election Committee, and CRONA members who helped us at the voting polls. The time and effort you committed during the past months have been valuable.

Our yearly across-the-board wage increase is effective the beginning of the pay period closest to April 1. This year the 6% wage increase is effective April 8, 2007. Next year, year 2008, the 5.5% wage increase will be effective April 6. Last year, year 2006, the April across-the –board increase was effective March 26. We will share the new wage schedules with you as soon as we receive the final calculations from Payroll.

Professional Career Advancement Program
One of the agreements reached during negotiations is the Professional Career Advancement Program. The hospital presented CRONA with this proposal the 2nd to the last day of negotiations when we were in the final stage of discussing the economic package, and two days before our contracts expired.

The purpose of the Program is to replace the current career ladder program (Staff Nurse Criteria) on a prospective basis. The Program will include an advancement process and criteria based on best practices, by utilizing an evidence-based practice approach, including assessment of nursing literature and nationwide analysis of professional practice models.

A design team including five CRONA representatives selected by CRONA and five management representatives from each hospital will develop the program. The goal is to reach a design agreeable to a majority of the committee members. If an agreement cannot be reached, the process of designing a program will continue.

We will share more information about this program with our members in the coming months.

Copy of New Contracts
CRONA is waiting for the final drafts of the new contracts. We will mail a copy of your new contract to your last known mailing address as soon as available. Log on to econnect to update your home mailing address and telephone number.

Monthly Minutes
In the coming months, CRONA will be focusing on specific topics related to our contracts. Our goal is to educate our members of their rights as provided by our collective agreements. We will focus on one topic each month such as retirement plan, medical retiree benefits, educational assistance program, overtime provisions, staff nurse criteria, performance evaluation, written warnings, grievance procedure and payroll questions.

Home Email Address
In order for CRONA to share information directly with our members, we ask you to check your home email at least once a month. Check your bulk mail, junk box, spam filters if you do not receive emails from CRONA. If you are still unable to receive CRONA’s emails after checking these folders, email crona@crona.org.

Grievances and Arbitrations
CRONA and the hospital reached an agreement during negotiations to settle the Skills Fair grievance at LPCH. CRONA has withdrawn the arbitration. The Educational Assistance Programs in our contracts will be addressed in more detail in future monthly minutes.

In the 2North arbitration, the Arbitrator ruled that LPCH violated Section 11 of the LPCH contract. He ruled that sending nurses to work in a Packard unit at another location is, indeed, a float, even if the hospital chooses to treat it as part of the same unit in which the nurse works at the main hospital. He ruled that when a nurse floats to a unit outside the main medical center the Employer must seek volunteers first, and, that the floated nurse will be reimbursed for bridge tolls and mileage at the IRS rate based on the distance from the medical center to the location to which the nurse has been floated and back. For the 2North nurses, this means retroactive and future reimbursement for mileage when they are assigned to work in the PEC unit at El Camino Hospital (there are no toll bridges between LPCH and El Camino). At the current IRS rate of 48.5 cents per mile, this works out to approximately $9 per day for every day that a 2North nurse was, or will be, assigned to work at El Camino.

Proposed Changes to the CRONA Bylaws
If you have any proposed changes to the CRONA Bylaws, please submit them no later than June 30, 2007 to crona@crona.org, attention Bylaws Committee. We will discuss proposed Bylaws changes at the October 2007 CRONA Convention.

Sincerely,
Lorie Johnson, President
CRONA
On behalf of the CRONA Executive Board