"Across the Board" raises...

I work in a nursing home and we usually get over the board raises. A whole 25 cents!!!

We are pretty lucky that we aren't understaffed, which is very unusual being a nursing home. We would all have strokes if they gave us $1.25 and hour more.

[This message has been edited by Melanie28 (edited February 28, 2001).]

The facility I work at also gives across the board raises of 3% annually. I find this very upsetting because I work a lot of overtime, never miss work or come in late and the nurses that habitually do the above, get the same raises that I do. This provides very little reason to be a responsible employee and I see a growing pattern of nurses that constantly call off. A across the borad raise would be a great beginning but then let's see some reward for your individual work performance. I know of at least four nurses that get all available written warnings every quarter and they are still employeed. Doesn't make sense to me but I don't see it changing in the near future.

My facility also has given "across the board" raises, yet they are still losing nurses left and right. Unfortunately, despite these raises, the rates at our hospital is still much lower than other area hospitals. One of the nurses I know who works per diem somewhere else mentioned that the other hospital she works at is much more responsive to the nurses. The example she gave was that administration wanted to have patients on amiodarone drips on telemetry and the nurses said they weren't comfortable, so management kiboshed the idea. At our facility, management continually makes decisions detrimental to the RN staff and simply shoves things down our throat. And they wonder why they have a retention problem?! Yet my hospital still has fairly decent RN/patient ratios, in spite of the fact they treat their nurses like crap (just my own very personal opinion). It cracks me up when Nurses' Week comes around and administration is glorifying us. I have made it my personal policy to refuse any gifts or anything that is given to us because I feel like they simply put on a "show" and if they really wanted to show that they valued us, they would treat us well all year round, not just during Nurses' Week.

Our hospital gives tier raises based on seniority. The problem exists though when your most senior nurses reach the cap resulting in a narrow range from new grad to 20+ yrs experience. We are a rural hospital and yes our CFO and CNO take into consideration the amount other hospitals are raising as far as 100 miles away (like I said--we're rural). They have to do this in order to retain nurses. We lost 23 nurses last summer because a hospital 50 miles away was paying a few bucks more. I understand that people need money in these times of economic turmoil, but it created a lot of mandatory overtime for the rest of us who have too many years invested to leave. As far as across the board raises, it sounds fair unless there is a cap.

That would be nice. Our staff salaries are frozen and have been for several years I hear.

renerian

We've gotten them before, but not in a while. It usually is in response to the going salary in the area. If we fall behind, then they raise up. But we are never the first to get the top salary in the area. Usually some other hospital leads the way. But yes, for adequate staffing and safe ratios, I'd surrender my retention raise.