Wage Scale Compression Issue
As part of our first contract, both sides agreed to drop the first three steps of our wage step scale in July 2022. This was meant to increase the lowest wage rate and help with RN recruitment. However, management has used this change to pay many nurses less than they should be based on their licensure year. This has created an issue where nurses with more years of experience are being paid the same or even less than nurses with fewer years of experience. This is demoralizing and hurting the hospital’s ability to retain nurses.- At the time of this “compression” of the wage step scale in 2022, nurses with 2020, 2021 and 2022 licensure years all went to $34.49, the step 3 rate at the time.
- Currently, management is hiring nurses with a 2022 licensure date at step 3. This puts them below other 2022 licensed nurses, who were at step 3 in 2022 and have since moved up at least two steps.
- In some cases, nurses with a 2021 licensure year who moved to step 3 in 2022 have advanced three steps and are on step 6, while newly hired nurses who were licensed the same year are only on step 3.
- As part of our overall wage proposal, we are seeking to address this issue so that nurses are placed fairly on the scale and provided with a wage rate appropriate to their years of experience.
- Victoria Rogers, licensed in 2018: $42.01 currently. Would make $49.24 at Tobey and $53.13 under our proposal. Additionally, because of how the bottom of the scale was compressed, Victoria only makes a small amount more than nurses licensed years after her.
- Terri deMedeiros, licensed in 1998: $62.43 currently. Would make $70.01 at Tobey and $81.79 under our proposal. Even though Terri has been an RN for 27 years, she is still not at the top of the current wage scale. If she worked at any other MNA hospital, she would have long ago been at the top.