FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: MEGAN OTHERSEN GORMAN / 215.817.5781 / [email protected]
MAY 14, 2025
NEARLY 300 RNS AND CRNAS FROM INDIANA REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER RATIFY A NEW UNION CONTRACT THAT DEMONSTRABLY VALUES THE WORK THEY DO AND THE PATIENTS THEY SERVE
“This Contract Will Mean a HUGE Retention Boost For Our Nurses”
INDIANA, PA – Last night, nearly 300 RNs and CRNAs at Indiana Regional Medical Center ratified a new 3-year contract that demonstrably – in a multitude of large and small ways – values what the nurses bring to the bedside, to the hospital, and to the Indiana community at large.
The vote for the nurses’ new 3-year contract, completed yesterday at 7:45 p.m., was overwhelmingly in favor of ratification. An impressive 98% of nurses voted YES.
“Everything we were able to do in this contract will attract nurses to our hospital and to our community,” says Indiana Registered Nurses Association President Christa Rounsley, RN, an IRMC Operating Room Nurse and a 24-year veteran of the hospital. “Nurses just weren’t coming here. And those who did come didn’t stay. With the wages, the benefits, the staffing language, and the respect the contract as a whole confers, we’re turning a brand new page, and we couldn’t be more thrilled – for ourselves, for our hospital, and for our patients.”
Indiana Registered Nurses Association Vice President Paula Helm, RN, an Ambulatory Care Nurse and also a 24-year veteran of the hospital, concurs: “This contract is like a warm blanket. It just feels good. We’re going to call everyone we know and say, ‘Come to IRMC!’”
At the core of the nurses’ concerns during negotiations – their first in seven long years – was securing a fair contract that would keep IRMC nurses at the bedside and enhance recruitment and retention of new nursing staff to the hospital. Their new 3-year contract is a direct reflection of these goals. Included in the language are:
- New staffing language that the Union can grieve and arbitrate. Safe nurse staffing is a key indicator of patient outcomes, a critical safeguard against in-hospital violence, and a decisive factor in a facility’s ability to retain nurses – because it’s impossible to recruit and retain skilled nurses when the working conditions won’t allow nurses to provide the level of care they entered the profession to give. New contractual staffing language should go a long way toward keeping IRMC nurses at the bedside and providing exceptional care to the Indiana community.
For instance, staffing language in the contract makes clear that nurses who work in specialty units such as the Emergency Department possess the specialized skills and experience required to care for the patients in those units – and management cannot pull a nurse to a specialty unit unless the nurse has the skills and experience to be there. Nurses who do will now receive a $3 pull pay differential when they are pulled.
- Wages that are tied to retention. Wages for nurses at IRMC were well below market – even nurses at nearby Punxsutawney Area Hospital and Armstrong County Memorial Hospital, both fellow members of the Pennsylvania Mountains Healthcare Alliance, made demonstrably more, even though IRMC is the largest of the three and absorbs a lot of the overflow from the other two hospitals. This was a key factor in the hospital’s inability to retain staff. With this new contract, IRMC nurses will see increases of up to 21% over the lifetime of the contract. Since they affiliated with PASNAP last year, the nurses will see increases of up to 27% at the end of this contract.
PLUS: A new 20-year step increase was added to the nurses’ wage scale – previously, the wage scale for IRMC nurses topped out at just 15 years, leaving highly skilled and experienced nurses without meaningful raises for years, even decades. The new step honors experience and the skill that comes with it, and should go a long way toward retaining IRMC’s most experienced nurses. Evening, night, weekend, on-call, and charge nurse differentials will all also go up.
PLUS: The new contract guarantees the nurses’ healthcare benefits must remain stable throughout the lifetime of the contract. If insurance plans are changed, the new plans must be comparable to current plans – which means the nurses’ wage gains won’t be eaten up by increases in the cost of their benefits.
- A voice at the table to tackle workplace violence. As incidents of workplace violence have escalated at hospitals nationwide, IRMC nurses have pushed for greater conversation regarding workplace violence and collaboration with management on addressing it. In their new contract, they won Union representation on the hospital’s Medical Safety Committee, ensuring that the concerns and experiences of bedside caregivers will be heard and addressed.
- New benefits that confer respect for bedside care and those who provide it. Among those enshrined in the contract are: Holidays can now be banked up to 12 days and will be paid out if nurses leave; paid time off (PTO) can be used after three months and taken in 4-, 8-, or 12-hour increments; a higher payout for the nurses’ Extended Illness Bank time upon separation/retirement; and shift cancellations must occur at least 1.5 hours before the shift begins or with 2 hours notice for a mid-shift cancellation. If proper notice isn’t received, nurses have the right to work a full shift.
“Everything we fought for, everything we won, will mean a HUGE retention boost for our nurses and therefore better care for our patients,” says Kim Thomas, RN, a Case Management Nurse and a 39-year veteran of the hospital. “We fought for ourselves in negotiating this contract, but we also fought for the future of nursing at IRMC.”
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The Indiana Registered Nurses Association is a new affiliate of PASNAP, the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, which represents 11,000-plus frontline nurses and healthcare professionals across Pennsylvania and was founded 25 years ago on the belief that patients receive the best care when clinical-care staff have a strong voice to advocate for their patients and themselves.
