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Sutter Health’s Mills Peninsula Health Services in San Mateo and Burlingame has reached a tentative contract agreement with the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee after 15 months of labor negotiations, the union announced Monday.

The deal covering some 650 registered nurses at the two campuses was struck after negotiators met with a federal mediator late Friday afternoon.

The proposed contract has the blessing of the union’s RN bargaining team and will be taken to the Mills Peninsula nurses for final approval. The date for the vote hasn’t been set.

The nurses’ union has been waging a bitter contract fight with Sutter on behalf of some dozen affiliate hospitals of the Sacramento health system. The negotiations have included three strikes involving several thousand nurses at Sutter hospitals last March and in October and December 2007. Among their complaints, nurses at the different Sutter hospitals said they were looking for improved pay and pension as well as improved patient care and staffing, especially during meal and rest breaks.

“We had three strikes because the hospital said they weren’t going to negotiate,” said Jenel Morgan, a staff nurse at Mills-Peninsula who was also on the negotiating team for the union at the two campuses. “We stuck together and stayed on the message from the very beginning.”

Among the highlights of the Mills Peninsula agreement, nurses get an across-the-board 13.5 percent salary increase during the first 10 months of the agreement, which would go into effect when ratified. Also, nurses at the hospital would get a 17.5 percent pay hike over three years.

According to Morgan, nurses at the two campuses make anywhere between $40 and $56 an hour prior to this pay hike and depending upon their level of seniority.

The nurses at Mills Peninsula have been working without a contract since June 30, 2007, and this new contract would expire in June 30, 2011 http://payday-badcredit.com. The nurses also obtained a one-time contribution to their 403(b) retirement plan of $3,000 for nurses with 20 years of service and $1,500 for those with five years of service.

The new contract also includes some language that should bulk up staffing of relief nurses during meal and rest breaks, something that is already mandated by state law, the union said. (Sutter Health is separately facing litigation over alleged violations of meal and rest break laws, although it wasn’t immediately clear on Monday if this settlement impacts those suits.)

The California Nurses Association is hoping to strike similar deals with other Sutter affiliates, where nurses have also been working without contracts and have participated in strike actions.

Negotiation sessions with a federal mediator are scheduled between CNA and Sutter for Aug. 19 at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland and Berkeley, for Aug. 20 at Marin General Hospital, for Aug. 26 at Sutter Delta Medical Center in Antioch, for Sept. 5 at Santa Rosa Medical Center and for Sept. 12 at Eden Medical Center.