This morning, on the heels of voting to impose an insulting last, best and final offer on the hardworking employees of Riverside County, the board also voted to approve an equity raise for a selection of County nurses. This equity raise is both long overdue and also not nearly enough to ensure a long-term solution for Riverside County services.
The raise includes a 5.5% market adjustment for the Registered Nurse I through V and Assistant Nurse Manager Classifications with the following designations: RCRMC or RUHS-MC, Specialty Care-T1, Specialty Care-T2, and Specialty Care-T3. Additional adjustments are being recommended to address the larger disparity at the bottom of the ranges by removing 5 steps from the bottom of the respective Registered Nurse and Assistant Nurse Manager classifications.
The County is also removing the bottom seven steps for Nurse Practitioners I-III, as well as those with the designation of CE, Desert, RCRMC, and Specialty Care-T1.
For a more details on the salary movement, click here.
While the dedicated nurses of Riverside County undoubtedly deserve this raise, so do the rest of the county’s public servants.
The County is offering the raise as a response to high turnover at RUHS and other County facilities – turnover driven by the same systemic problems that every Riverside County employee faces – understaffing, lack of safety at work, and hostile management.
Instead of addressing these problems holistically and incorporating the input of the workers who actually make the County run, management is slapping a band-aid on a gaping wound and hoping it will fix the root problem.
Like their other attempts at a quick fix – $40 million to KMPG, millions of dollars to traveler nurses, and, of course the imposition of an untenable contract – this desperate effort isn’t going to accomplish what the County hopes.
As always, we call on the County to come back to the table and work together with County employees to create a structure that raises up all of Riverside County. Their “my way or the highway” style of leadership has been proven to fail, and it will continue to fail Riverside County as a whole.
Nurses welcome the long-overdue raise but will continue advocating for improvement across the county safety net in order to truly serve our Riverside Communities.