Different pay depending on area - is this common

This seem odd to me. One thing I thought of is perhaps your NICU isn't actually a part of your hospital, but a division of the Children's Hospital? Maybe sharing a building but not a budget?

No, that wouldn't be it, we don't have different hospitals. We have different departments, for example, Dept of Medicine, Dept of Women's and Children, Dept of Surg

At least I'm not the only one that thinks this is odd. My hospital has done a few sketchy things since I've started working there, like cutting the accrual of paid leave time (and then "giving it back") and changing the weekend track program and cutting pay of people who have been working weekend track for a while. This apparently has been going on for years, and I think it sucks.

Personally, I would bail and find a new place to work, but I'm 2 months from having a baby and now is not the time. I may jump ship once I'm off of maternity leave tho.

I don't know how common it is but I do know that certain hospitals may pay better for certain areas in demand, and it may not be the base pay that changes from different areas but differentials. Perhaps your med/surg floors have a low retention rate and a very high turn over rate, thus they may give those nurses higher differentials.

Nope, I live and work in NYC and the pay in my hospital is uniform. I heard that critical care used to get more but that changed many years ago.

I don't understand why you are getting less in NICU (CRITICAL CARE) than in med/surg (regular unit). This is odd, if anything you should be getting more. may be you should contact your union if you have one or just talk to the HR director as planned.

goodluck

Yes it is common to have different differentials for various areas. Critical care and ER generally have higher salary offers or diffs. Some places that have problems getting L&D staff offer it. Other places offer higher $ for med/surg/tele since those are often the hardest units to keep staff due to the high volume of work and stress. Sounds like they do not have problems keeping nurses in NICU there so they do not offer the extra incentive. And no, they usually do not tell employees this unless your are a new applicant and looking at different areas to work in. Most people do not care about the diff and are usually just trying to get away from whatever specialty they dislike so it often does not make a difference it they are told about the $ change or not.

This is new to me, but I guess I am not surprized. I also live in New York, and work for a union hospital. The rate of pay is the same, however, experience pay, creditation in certain fields are added in, but even that is uniform, so to speak.