Cooper nurses approve a new union contract that includes safe staffing provisions

Cooper University Hospital’s nurses scored some of the region’s strongest workload limits in a new contract approved this week with nurse-to-patient staffing ratios to address a key driver of burnout, their union said.

The three-year contract limits the number of patients one registered nurse can care for generally to no more than five, and no more than two patients in critical-care units, according to Health Professionals and Allied Employees, the union that represents the nurses.

The contract will help nurses provide higher quality care for patients, said Dorris Bell, a registered nurse at Cooper and union leader.

“It will also help lessen the stress of very difficult, emotionally draining work,” Bell said in a statement.

Nurses voted “overwhelmingly” to approve the contract on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to the union, which did not provide vote tallies.

» READ MORE: Virtua Health nurses approve contract in a second vote, but the union remains divided

Their previous contract expired June 1. The union’s bargaining committee and the health system avoided a threatened strike when they reached an agreement Friday afternoon, hours before the previous three-year contract expired.

The contract shows Cooper’s commitment to the well-being of nurses and patient safety, said Kathy Devine, Cooper’s chief nursing officer.

“We believe this contract also makes our nurses the highest paid in Southern New Jersey,” Devine said in a statement.

Since the pandemic, nurses have been leaving bedside jobs in New Jersey and throughout the nation, citing burnout from having to care for too many patients.

Staffing limits have emerged as a core demand of nurses in contract negotiations across the Philadelphia region and beyond. For example, nurse-to-patient staffing restrictions were a catalyst for a four-month nurses’ strike that started last summer at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick.

Some states, such as California and Oregon, have written into law limits on nurse-to-patient ratios. Such safe staffing bills, as advocates call them, are under consideration by both Pennsylvania’s and New Jersey’s legislatures.

While awaiting action from lawmakers, nurses are organizing to secure staffing levels in contracts, said Debbie White, president of HPAE and a registered nurse herself. And coming out of the pandemic, nurses are more willing to escalate negotiations to advance their case.

“We are in a moment in history that the pandemic burned our staff out,” White said. “They are no longer going to take it.”

HPAE also reached an agreement last week with Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in Englewood for 800 nurses, and continues to negotiate on behalf of the 750 staffers at Palisades Medical Center, both in North Jersey.