Montco Hospital Nurses Union Reaches New Contract After Strike

EAST NORRITON, PA — Nurses at Montgomery County's Suburban Community Hospital have approved a new three-year union contract after more than year of negotiations, which included a strike, after the hospital was radically changed by owner Prime Healthcare.

The new contract commits to increased staff in the emergency department and MedSurg tele unit, additional nurses to ensure safe staffing levels, better holiday hours and paid sick leave, experience wage increases, and general wage increases totaling about a 9 percent raise over three years.

The union called the contract the result of "the longest negotiations we've ever had.

"We did not back down,” emergency department nurse Octavia Rumer, the co-president of the Suburban General Nurses Association, told Patch. "Our commitment to getting a deal that improves our work and protects our patients never wavered.”

Prime Healthcare did not immediately respond to a request for a statement.

Prime weathered a strike from the union that began in Dec. 2023. Resolving the situation became more pressing for both parties as Prime converted Suburban to a "micro-hospital" in July 2024, ending all surgeries and shutting down the intensive care unit. In a statement following negotiations, the union call the move a "dramatic contraction of services," and nearly two dozen nurses were laid off.

The goal in contract negotiations, they said, became to simply save the hospital, retain as many nurses as possible, and protect patients by ensuring healthy staffing levels.

Nurses ratified the contract with a 93 percent vote. Back in Dec. 2023, they agreed to strike with a 97 percent vote.

The lengthy negotiations come amid ongoing recoil from the pandemic which has left hospitals and healthcare systems across the nation short-staffed and underfunded. It's also part of a nationwide reckoning faced by for-profit health networks over treatment of overworked and at-risk frontline workers.

While nurses consider this specific new contract a victory, advocates paint a dire picture of a healthcare system that has struggled to find balance and normalcy in the post-2020 world.

“Even now, several years post-COVID, the system that’s supposed to support bedside healthcare professionals and therefore patients is in crisis,” Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals president Maureen May said in a statement supporting the Suburban contract. “Following the worst pandemic of our lifetimes, hospital staff numbers have dwindled nationwide due to burnout."

Prime owns 45 hospitals in 14 states.