Benefits/Retirement at Bay Area hospitals?

**NickiLaughs, ADN, BSN, RN** · May 15, 2016

Would love to compare benefits of other Bay Area hospitals. Currently I'm at this tiny hospital in Palo Alto :). We recently signed a contract to increase our pay more than UCSF/Kaiser, but I feel our benefits are still not up to par.
Insurance - $500/month for a family of 4 (We use Kaiser...everyone tells me Kaiser employees get free insurance for their family? And lifetime insurance after xx years?)
Retirment - 403b, auto 5% contributed after 1 year, additional 4% match. Increases to 5 and 6% with longevity, no pension (do UCSF/Kaiser have auto contribution and match or just match?, I know both definitely have a pension)
Education - $1800/yr (based on FT which is 36 hrs/week)
Anyone care to share the benefits?

Im at Kaiser in the Sacramento area, but we are part of the same contract as the Bay Area nurses. (Not complaining!)

insurance is free for us and our family, we have 5$ co pays and free hospital stays. The insurance after retirement then has some costs associated with it, I think dependent on how long the nurse has been there,etc.

your retirement account has a better match than us, we have 2% match on our 401k, and a small pension that we don't contribute to which also depends on how long you have been there, I'm told it's a very small monthly amount, even the nurses who are lifers, get like 200$ a month after 40 years so saving for retirement is mostly on us.

Education is 2500$ yearly and we also have 40 paid education hours a year we can use for CEUs or class time.

Your benefits aren't that different from the average place. When I worked for UCD, the kaiser insurance plan would have cost over 1k a month for me and my family, the pension was supposed to be awesome, but they took 10% of my salary every month for it. Working at the lowest paying hospital started to not be so awesome, I can save 10% where I'm at, and because they pay me almost 20$ an hour more, I'm not sure the retirement is that different... Most jobs have certain things that are better than others. Most average out but you have to decide your biggest priorities. I wanted good health insurance. Hope that helps. You may get more response in the California forum btw.

calirn415 · May 15, 2016

wow that pension is tiny! was expecting a lot more...at least insurance is free but at that age we'll have medicare. wondering if the match at my facility outweighs the pension?