After months of negotiation, Southcoast Health and Tobey Hospital employees reached a wage increase agreement Jan. 17.

Members of 1199 Service Employees International Union, who are primarily hospital support staff, picketed earlier this month, asking for a 3% across the board wage increase after Southcoast Health offered 2%. The union and Southcoast Health ultimately settled on a 2.5% increase.

Prior to the agreement, hospital support staff such as safety sitters, housekeepers and surgical technologists raised concerns that low wages had led to perpetual understaffing since the Covid pandemic.

Health Unit Coordinator Wanda Johnson said on Jan. 9 that many employees leave Tobey Hospital for Southcoast Health’s larger St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford because similar jobs there pay $2 more an hour.

“We’ve been working short for like two years,” said Johnson, who has worked at Tobey Hospital for 42 years. “We have some employees that are still only making 15 something [dollars] an hour.”

Kerry Brown, the chief negotiator for 1199 said workers were “overwhelmingly” in support of the new contract with the hospital.

“The activism that led up to coming to this agreement was influential in convincing Tobey Hospital to bring that number up to something that was acceptable to our membership,” Brown said.

Johnson said that negotiators were determined that the “entire care team be valued.”

“Every Tobey employee works hard and deserves to be appreciated and receive recognition,” Johnson said.