Fox Chase nurses and technical staff have approved their first union contracts, averting strikes

Nurses and technical specialists at the Fox Chase Cancer Center have voted to approve their first union contracts, averting a five-day strike that was scheduled to begin next week.

The contracts include wage increases, paid parental leave, and the hospital’s commitment to improve staffing levels of both nurses and techs, according to the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, which represents the workers at the Temple Health-owned cancer specialty hospital.

The workers reached their first contracts nearly a year after the two unions formed last June — one representing registered nurses and one representing techs, including X-ray techs, surgical techs, and respiratory therapists.

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PASNAP held separate votes for the nurses and techs to approve each contract on Tuesday. Ninety-seven percent of the nurses and 91% of the techs who participated approved the three-year agreement for their group, PASNAP said. The union did not say how many members voted.

Fox Chase did not respond to The Inquirer’s request for comment.

The roughly 135 techs and nearly 400 nurses at the specialty cancer center in Northeast Philadelphia gave their unions’ bargaining committees approval to hand Temple a 10-day strike notice in March, but stopped short then of declaring one.

Earlier this month, the nurses and techs voted to approve a five-day strike starting on June 4. With the contract approval, the strike threat is moot.

“I am beyond ecstatic to have come to an agreement,” Rossana Caputo, a phone triage nurse, said via email.