Maui Health workers avoid strike, approve new contract with 21% pay raises and safe staffing plans

Maui County health care workers have approved a new four-year contract that will provide significant pay increases and requirements for safe levels of staffing, avoiding a strike that could’ve sidelined hundreds of staff at three critical hospitals. 

Hospital operator Maui Health and the union that represents the workers hammered out a tentative agreement on Dec. 20 in the wake of a three-day strike by hospital workers in November. Union members met with the bargaining team and chief negotiator on Thursday and Monday, and more than 90% of members who participated in the vote cast their ballot in favor of the new agreement. 

“I’m super happy that we got the deal,” said Mathew Pelc, a CAT scan technician at Maui Memorial Medical Center and chair of the United Nurses and Health Care Employees of Hawai‘i union. “It’s everything we wanted to accomplish in a way. No contract’s ever perfect, but we did the best we can.”

Maui Health CEO Lynn Fulton praised “the tremendous work of both bargaining teams to bring this to fruition and reach an agreement that affords competitive compensation to all job classifications represented across the bargaining unit.”

“Our nurses and nurse leaders will continue to collaborate on staffing plans that are dynamic and flexible, ensuring that we can continue to provide exceptional health care to our community,” Fulton said in a statement on Monday evening.

The union represents 930 employees at Maui Memorial, Kula Hospital and Lānaʻi Community Hospital, which is more than half of the more than 1,650 employees who work for Maui Health. The Kaiser affiliate took over operations of the three hospitals from the state in July 2017. The union membership includes registered nurses; social workers; physical and occupational therapists; speech/language pathologists; MRI, imaging and mammography technicians; financial counselors; admitting clerks; and receptionists. 

In September, the union’s contract expired, and members voted to authorize a strike if necessary. With bargaining dragging on, they took to the picket lines for three days in early November. 

Staffing and salaries have long been the biggest issues. Workers said that changing ratios of patients to staff put patients at risk and increased the burden on staff. They also raised concerns about the lowest-paid employees at the hospitals, saying that some had to work multiple jobs to be able to afford living in the islands.

The new contract includes across-the-board increases of 21% over four years, according to Maui Health. The union said this includes raises between 27% and nearly 50% for the lowest-paid workers, such as clerical staff and receptionists. Some will see their wages go up by just over 97% — Pelc said this is for the per diem workers who have been traveling off island for better pay elsewhere. 

Maui Health added that the contract also includes a one-time ratification bonus applicable to all union members, plus additional wage adjustments for individual job classifications, longevity pay, preceptor, educational and other pay differentials.

It also lays out a staffing plan that allows for flexibility depending on a patient’s needs and takes into account national guidelines. Pelc said some, but not all of those national guidelines were being followed. Now that they’re in the contract, they’re enforceable. 

The new contract will also allow for more regular meetings of a nurse staffing committee that already exists but had not been included in the contract before, according to the union. The committee brings together nursing leaders in the hospital to set staffing ratios for the different units. 

Roman Funes, who’s been a nurse at Maui Memorial since 2016 and transferred to the Emergency Department in May 2020, was thrilled for the changes. He was the charge nurse on Saturday night and said they were six nurses short for four hours, putting more pressure on the remaining staff and forcing him to juggle oversight of the department with patient care. He said four nurses recently transferred from the ER to other departments because of the continued stress. 

His wife is a nurse in telemetry, where he says the ratios should be four patients to one nurse. On Thursday, she was looking after five patients. Funes said the risk grows with every patient over the recommended ratio.

“It’s very imperative for both the patients in our community and for the staff to be at appropriate-level ratio so we can take care of the patients the way we should be,” Funes said. 

Both Pelc and Funes said that when they came back from the strike in November, there was very little movement at the bargaining table at first. However, after a poster started circulating among union members about a planned one-week strike during the week of the New Year’s holiday, they said the union and hospital management were able to move quickly to reach an agreement. 

Funes believed that the union’s higher-wage employees were able to use the costs of replacing them during a strike as leverage to put pressure on Maui Health management to increase salaries for lower-paid employees. 

Both he and Pelc were relieved to have a deal, especially in light of labor disputes at other hospitals across the state. Last week, nurses at Queen’s Medical Center on O’ahu and Wilcox Medical Center on Kaua’i announced plans to strike for three days. 

“Sometimes the employer needs to remember who does the work and everything they make possible,” Pelc said. “I’m glad we don’t have to do it again. It is tough. It is emotional. But to have a fair deal in place … we were willing to do what we had to do.”