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Baystate Franklin, Nurses Settle On Five-Year Contract

Nurses on the picket line at Baystate Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield, Mass. during a one-day strike in June 2017.
Dave Roback
/
The Republican / masslive.com/photos
Nurses on the picket line at Baystate Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield, Mass. during a one-day strike in June 2017.

The Massachusetts Nurses Association and Baystate Franklin Medical Center have reached a settlement on a new contract.

The agreement comes after about 18 months of talks, strikes and lockouts at the hospital in Greenfield.

About 200 nurses at Baystate Franklin have been negotiating for higher wages, better health insurance and more staff. 

"What was happening before is a nurse would leave, retire, resign. Sometimes they'd fill that position. Sometimes they wouldn't," said registered nurse Donna Stern, who helped lead negotiations. "Now they're committed to always filling that position."

Baystate Health officials issued a statement that said "the new contract continues to provide market-competitive wages, benefits and health insurance."

The union's bargaining committee endorsed the 5-year contract. The membership will vote whether to ratify it within a few weeks.

Meanwhile, nurses at Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield have been fighting for a new contract since October 2016. They're back at the negotiating table Friday.

Nancy Eve Cohen is a former NEPM senior reporter whose investigative reporting has been recognized with an Edward R. Murrow Regional Award for Hard News, along with awards for features and spot news from the Public Media Journalists Association (PMJA), American Women in Radio & Television and the Society of Professional Journalists.

She has reported on repatriation to Native nations, criminal justice for survivors of child sexual abuse, linguistic and digital barriers to employment, fatal police shootings and efforts to address climate change and protect the environment. She has done extensive reporting on the EPA's Superfund cleanup of the Housatonic River.

Previously, she served as an editor at NPR in Washington D.C., as well as the managing editor of the Northeast Environmental Hub, a collaboration of public radio stations in New York and New England.

Before working in radio, she produced environmental public television documentaries. As part of a camera crew, she also recorded sound for network television news with assignments in Russia, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba and in Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia.
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