Virtua union with 1,700 nurses will take a second vote on rejected contract

Nurses at Virtua Health will reconsider their decision last week to reject a contract negotiated between their union and officials at the South Jersey-based hospital system, the union told nurses on Tuesday.

The second vote on the contract proposal is expected to take place on Thursday.

The contract would cover 1,700 nurses, most of whom work at Voorhees Hospital in Camden County and Marlton Hospital in Burlington County, the hospital said. The nurses are represented by JNESO, an AFL-CIO affiliate that represents roughly 5,000 nurses and health-care techs in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Union representatives said in a Tuesday meeting that turnout was low when members were asked to vote on the contract, which was rejected by a narrow margin. Only 305 nurses voted on March 4, and the contract was rejected by 11 votes, a representative for the union told members, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Inquirer.

If the nurses reject a contract again, it will bring the union closer to a strike.

» READ MORE: Virtua Health union of 1,700 nurses rejects contract offer

Virtua will continue to offer the current proposal until Friday, the health system said in an email to nurses last week. The note, one of two obtained by The Inquirer, asked nurses to reconsider the “very fair and generous contract offer” in another vote.

“At this time, Virtua is continuing to keep open its offer described in the Tentative Agreement, provided the members ratify the proposed contract on or before next Friday, March 15,” Rhonda Jordan, Virtua’s chief human resources officer, said in an email signed by the health system’s negotiation committee.

Virtua and JNESO declined to comment.

The union informally polled members who attended informational meetings on Tuesday about whether to vote again on the contract. A majority agreed to another vote. But some pushed back, arguing that voting again was caving to pressure from hospital administrators, according to a recording of the meeting.

The nurses’ contract expired on Feb. 28. Bargaining for a new contract began in early January, according to the union.

The team bargaining on behalf of the nurses and Virtua Health administrators reached a tentative agreement at the end of February. However, the union’s general membership voted to reject the proposal on March 4.

JNESO held four informational meetings on Tuesday to discuss next steps after last week’s vote to reject the contract. The union said in emails to members that the goal of the meeting was to “discuss the forthcoming strike.”

At the meetings, a representative from the union cautioned against moving ahead with a strike based on the low turnout vote, a recording provided to The Inquirer showed. Virtua’s management was aware of the low turnout and margin, the representative said.

“If they think only 300 are going on strike, they will never come back to the table,” the union representative told the nurses in attendance.

Nurses expressed frustration with both Virtua’s management and the union. They complained about lack of transparency in the union’s handling of the negotiations and contract vote, and Virtua’s resistance to offer a better contract.

JNESO told members last week that it filed an unfair labor practices complaint against Virtua for attempting to “dictate internal business to the union,” a reference to emails sent by the health system to nurses, according to an email obtained by The Inquirer.

Any such complaint had not been posted to the website of the National Labor Relation Board as of March 13.

Virtua is the largest health-care provider in South Jersey. In addition to Voorhees and Marlton, its three other hospitals in the region are Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Mount Holly Hospital, and Willingboro Hospital.

The rejected three-year contract includes wage increases, according to a draft of the agreement obtained by The Inquirer. But it does not include an increase to pension contributions, which the nurses had sought.

The health system increased pension contributions in the nurses’ 2020 contract, Jordan, the Virtua human resources chief, told nurses in an email last week. She called the current rate at which Virtua contributes to the pension fund “fair and generous.”

The contract proposal also does not include any change to the number of patients each nurse is assigned to take care of, one of the nurses’ demands, according to the union’s website.

Similar demands for improved staffing levels was among the catalysts for four-month strike of the roughly 1,700 nurses at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick.