Service & Solidarity Spotlight: Nurses in Wichita Ratify New Contract

Working people across the United States regularly step up to help out our friends, neighbors and communities during these trying times. In our Service & Solidarity Spotlight series, we’ll showcase one of these stories every day. Here’s today’s story.

National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU) members at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis and Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph hospitals in Wichita, Kansas, have voted overwhelmingly to ratify a new collective bargaining agreement.

The deal includes safe staffing improvements, workplace violence prevention language, a 17%–24% wage increase over three years, additional paid holidays and more. Registered nurses (RNs) also won one master agreement that covers all NNOC-represented nurses in the city.

“After a successful strike in July, and with the threat of a second strike, we were able to win key improvements on all our priority issues,” said Marvin Ruckle, an RN in the neonatal intensive care unit at St. Joseph. “Patients will be safer, and nurses will stay at our hospitals because of this agreement.”

“Nurses in Wichita are one,” said Shelly Rader, an RN in the emergency unit at St. Francis. “And now, we have one master agreement to cover all union nurses in Wichita, we are united for our patients.”