The nurses at Sandpoint’s Bonner General Hospital will soon send their union representatives to contract mediation over an expired contract extension.  According to Val Holstrom, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local No. 690, the 20-plus times in which the hospital and union officials have met to discuss the nurses’ contract details have not been successful. Therefore, mediation is the next step. 

Although the union and hospital were able to work out some of the issues with language within the contracts, there is still contention over work rules and compensation that are outlined in the draft contracts.  According to Bonner General Chief Executive Officer Sheryl Rickard, the hospital’s administration is “extremely hopeful” that mediation will be successful in ironing out some of the details that are still in dispute. 

According to Holstrom, “Our expectation is to have a fully-recommended offer that both the hospital and the nurses can agree with and then we’ll vote the membership.”  Although both sides are keeping silent about the details related to the dispute, Holstrom has stated that the additional hours of labor the hospital is seeking from the nurses must be met by satisfactory wages and benefits packages before the nurses union, and the approximate 100 nurses at Bonner General it represents, will accept them. 

“We’re not asking for anything more than what they’ve done for everybody else,” says Holstrom. “[The nurses] want to be able to afford to live in Sandpoint and not have to seek work at a higher-paying hospital because the people generally love the community and they love working at the hospital. But you have to be able to afford to live where you work.”