Hospital Union Votes to Ratify New Contract

Non-technical employees of the Harvard Community Health Plan voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to ratify a new contract with the plan's management, ending their union's month-long picketing of the plan's two local health care facilities.

Gerry M. Shea, staff director of Local 880 of the Massachusetts Hospital Workers Union, which represents the plan's 220 employees, said yesterday the union believes it could have held out for a better contract, but did not want to have to strike the facilities.

The two-year contract grants the workers a 6.8 per cent general increase this year and a further 7.5 per cent increase in 1979, together with benefits that will boost the entire union benefits package by almost 25 per cent over its current level. The pact, which replaces one that expired on September 30, also grants the workers four weeks of paid vacation after five years on the job.

Shea said the union, which had conducted an informational picketing campaign since the old contract expired, wanted a package that would have given them the same vacation benefits as the plan's registered nurses.

"But for us to get a better contract we would be in a strike situation," Shea said.

Under the new contract, employees who are hired by the plan next year will begin with salaries of about $3.75 per hour.

Beth Israel and Peter Bent Brigham Hospitals--two Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals that the union repeatedly said gave their employees better packages than the plan's offer--will pay first-year employees only about $3.40 per hour next year.

Shea would not release the final tally of the union's ratification vote, but said support for the new contract was "very strong."

Thomas O. Pyle, vice president of the plan, said yesterday he believes the contract offer, which he offered to the union last week, will benefit both sides in the bargaining.

"Obviously it's acceptable to us, or we wouldn't have offered it. And now the union has accepted it," he said.--F.J.C