Emily Hays File Photo
AFSCME Local 1303-467 President Cynthia Harris-Jackson at a vaccine clinic in 2021.
Local legislators unanimously approved a new long-awaited contract for school nurses, issuing future and retroactive raises for public health workers who have worked to keep schools and students safe throughout the pandemic.
Local legislators took that vote Tuesday night during the latest full Board of Alders meeting in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall.
The vote comes less than a month after members of AFSCME Local 1303 – 467, the union representing New Haven school nurses, unanimously approved the six-year contract on Dec. 30.
The agreement, which arrives after multiple years of negotiations, is retroactive to July 1, 2020 and will extend through June 30, 2026. (Read the full contract and associated documents here.)
“As nurses we worked tirelessly 24-hours a day at the beginning of the pandemic,” nursing union president Cynthia Harris-Jackson is quoted as saying in a city press release sent out by the mayor’s office after Tuesday’s vote. “We rose to the occasion and served New Haven residents to ensure they were well informed about COVID and vaccinations. This contract will allow us to continue doing what we do best — supporting the health needs of our community.”
Finance Committee Vice-Chair Ron Hurt rose during Tuesday’s meeting to urge his colleagues to vote for the contract.
“The structural increase in nurse salaries will make these jobs more competitive,” Hurt said.
He noted that the school district currently has 27 nurse vacancies out of 45 positions. Meanwhile, schools are contending with a “triple-demic” of flu, RSV, and Covid-19.
Per the new contract, nurses will receive a retroactive raise of 3 percent for the 2020 – 2021 school year, the first full year of the pandemic.
The new contract then institutes a new salary scale for nurses ranging from $63,500 to $94,326. Those salaries will retroactively apply for the 2021 – 2022 school year and beyond.
Then, for the current 2022 – 2023 school year through the contract’s end in 2026, nurses will receive an annual raise of 2.25 percent.
The contract also designates new hires as 12-month employees rather than 10-month employees. This policy change will prevent nurses from having to rely on unemployment for the summer — and nurses will be able to staff summer camps.
A Dec. 30 letter written by city Director of Labor Relations Wendella Ault Battey identified the contract’s medical benefits provisions as: “Medical benefits coverage consists of two plans only (Century Preferred and High Deductible) with new employees automatically placed into the high deductible plan. Cost shares for the high deductible plan are set at a 12% cost share, with a buyup into the Century Preferred plan if chosen by existing employees. Additionally, the City will see a cost savings of up to 4% with the implementation of an essential formulary prescription plan.”
In that same letter, Battey described the contracts’ pension provision as: “Current and future employees will now have various options for joint and survivor benefits, as well as an early retirement penalty of 5% (increased from 2%) per each early year of retirement. Additionally, employees hired after the ratification of the contract shall only be eligible for retirement at age 65 rather than the minimum age of 62. These pension changes provide the City with long-term savings and assist with retention of employees while reducing the City’s obligation for retirement payments.”
City spokesperson Lenny Speiller told the Independent by email Wednesday morning that the new nurses union contract will have an estimated cost of around $337,000 over the course of the six-year deal. That’s when factoring in the revised salary scale, annual wage increases, and medical benefit and pension changes, the latter of which, he said, “will provide long-term savings to the City.”
“There are, of course, variables on where things will eventually net out,” he added. For example, “whether all the positions are filled” and “how many people elect to opt into the city’s healthcare plan.” Click here to read the city finance department’s line-by-line breakdown of the budget impacts of the new contract.
Thomas Breen contributed to this report.