Nurses, hospital reach tentative agreement

Nurses at Franklin Hospital in Valley Stream canceled plans to picket Tuesday after their union and hospital management came to a tentative agreement in the early morning hours.

The 250 nurses represented by the New York State Nurses Association had been working without a contract since Jan. 1 because they could not agree on health-benefit contributions with the hospital's owner, North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System.

The three-year contract is pending a union vote, scheduled for Tuesday. Details of the contract will not be available until after it is approved, said union spokesman Mark Genovese.

"The RNs had been seeking to resolve an inequity that resulted in them paying a higher percentage of their health coverage than RNs in other hospitals in the system," Genovese said.

Tuesday's agreement came after 18 hours of negotiations between union leaders and management that ended at 2 a.m., said Mark Gloade, general counsel for North Shore-LIJ.

The process had minimal impact on patients, he added.

Nurses at three other North Shore-LIJ hospitals renewed their contracts this year.