Book of Proposals: MNA Work Schedules Proposal

MNA Work Schedules Proposal

The principle of our proposal is to maximize nurses’ choice over their schedules to benefit their work-life balance. Our proposal maintains a strong self-scheduling model. Ultimately, for scheduling to work as well as possible, the hospital needs to provide sufficient RN staffing. Our proposal would:

• Establish that the order of priority for scheduling would be: Permanent nurses, per diem nurses, and then temporary nurses like MTMs and travelers.
• Maintain that the hospital posts needs, and all MNA nurses sign up for extra and overtime shifts on a rotating seniority basis.
• Eliminate the six Monday/Friday, Sunday/Thursday requirement.

We negotiated similar language at Tobey, ensuring nurses have the greatest rights and preferences over their work schedules. Management has made a counter proposal on this topic. While we are looking to improve our current contract language, management’s counter is a backward slide that undermines nurses’ ability to have rights and preference over their work schedules. Management’s proposal would:

• Take away self-scheduling and give manager’s complete discretion. All scheduling would be based on requests that may or may not be honored.
• Continue to require nurses to work six Mondays and Fridays per schedule (or Thursdays and Sundays for night shift nurses). Of those six days, management’s proposal would require nurses to work at least two Mondays and two Fridays (or two Thursdays and two Sundays).
• Only allow nurses to request up to 3 days off in a six-week period, with no guarantee of receiving them.