Nurses from Stanford Hospital and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford voted last week to officially accept a new three-year contract that will increase their wages by four percent annually. Earlier, on April 27, the union struck a tentative deal with the hospitals after voting to strike if negotiations failed.

Last Wednesday, 2,330 of the 3,302 members of the Committee for Recognition of Nursing Achievement (CRONA) voted to ratify the tentative agreement, passing the deal with 70 percent of the union’s approval. 878 union members did not vote.

CRONA began preparing to strike in mid-April, contending that Stanford nurses had lower pay and fewer benefits than their peers at other Bay Area institutions, such as UCSF. During mediations, which were expected to last two days but stretched more than a week, the union initially asked for yearly wage increases of seven or six percent.

While the new contract does not quite achieve these numbers, it will make CRONA nurses the highest paid in the Bay Area. The first four percent raise will go into effect immediately, followed by two more raises in 2017 and 2018, respectively. Additional pay increases will also benefit part-time nurses and nurses early in the careers.

Furthermore, the agreement provides for new limits on nurse’s required on-call hours, incentive pay for nurses to gain more advanced skills and improved retirement plans.

Contact Hannah Knowles at hknowles ‘at’ stanford.edu.