Dexter Baker, an operating room nurse who’s been at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing for almost 20 years, walked out of a bargaining session around 2:30 a.m. Tuesday feeling “tired but excited,” he said. “It’s been a long road.”
The three-year agreement reached in that session, which still has to be ratified by union members, means a five-day strike scheduled to start January 20 has been cancelled. More than 98% of the 2,000 nurses and healthcare professionals had voted to authorize a strike.
“We really appreciate the community's backing during this time, I know this may have been a little nerve wracking for them as well with the announcement of our strike,” said Baker, who also serves as elected co-chair of the bargaining team.
The Professional Employee Council of Sparrow Hospital-Michigan Nurses Association (PECSH-MNA) also held “an energetic informational picket with nearly 1,000 participants in the fall” after their contract expired October 30, according to a union statement.
“We are grateful to both bargaining teams, who have worked tirelessly since August to reach an agreement that best supports our nurses and health care professionals and our mission to provide patients with safe, quality care,” a University of Michigan-Sparrow spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday. “We are confident this agreement will help to attract and retain top talent across our units and ensure leading wages and benefits for our team members.”
The largest sticking points were healthcare coverage, wages, and increased benefits for employees injured by workplace violence, Baker said. The University of Michigan, which bought Sparrow in 2023, announced during the contract negotiations that it was ending the former Physicians Health Plan (PHP), which covered many of the union members.
“PHP was closing and we really wanted to make sure that we could keep affordable health care for our members, as we were all switching to Blue Cross Blue Shield,” Baker said. “So that was a major win and able to decrease the premium percentage for our members. Another huge sticking point was wages, but again, we were able to fight through and we got our membership an average of anywhere from 20 to 32%.”
That’s important for recruiting and retaining nurses, Baker said. And it comes at a time when nurses and hospitals often disagree about the root causes of a nationwide staffing crisis that’s impacting patient care.
“You need to be able to recruit staff to come help at your hospital and work side by side with you, and you also have to be able to retain those members that are already working beside you,” he said.
This is also the first contract the union has negotiated since University of Michigan Health bought Sparrow.
“We always say it's hard to dissect where the phone call goes once they leave the room, but we have familiar faces on the other side of the table. So it was a very professional and good negotiation between PECSH-MNA and Sparrow. And at the end of the day, we were able to get one of the best contracts that we've seen," said Baker.
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