Nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester approved a new contract with parent company Tenet Healthcare on Monday night, ending the longest nursing strike in state history, the nurses union said.
Nurses voted overwhelmingly in favor of the deal between Dallas-based Tenet and the Massachusetts Nurses Association, more than 300 days after they began picketing outside the hospital.
“For nearly 10 months our nurses have walked the line for safer patient care, for the honor of our profession and for the right of all workers who make the difficult decision to engage in a lawful strike to return to their original positions,” said Marlena Pellegrino, a longtime St. Vincent’s nurse who co-chaired the bargaining unit, in a statement. “As we stand here tonight, we can proudly say we have achieved our goals.”
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The union reached an agreement with Tenet on Dec. 17, following an intervention by US Labor Secretary Martin J. Walsh, the former mayor of Boston.
The deal guarantees the 700 striking nurses will return to their original positions and “provides the staffing improvements the nurses need to end the strike and re-enter the hospital to provide care to their community in the face of an emerging new surge of COVID-19,” the union said.
St. Vincent will soon begin to recall striking nurses to their positions and expects all nurses will be back to work by Jan. 22, according to Matthew Clyburn, a hospital spokesman.
“We are now focused on working together for the good of the people we serve,” Clyburn said in an e-mail. “We will renew our focus on the values we share and the commitments we make to one another as colleagues.”
The hospital has said that nurses who were hired to replace those on strike will remain in their positions.
The deal establishes new limits on the number of patients nurses are assigned in several departments, plus 2 percent raises during each year of the contract and new workplace safety regulations, the union said. Staffing levels were the main issue during negotiations, with nurses saying they had too many patients to care for safely.
The nurses drew support from the state’s all-Democratic congressional delegation, including some who visited the picket line.
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Representative Lori Trahan said the vote was a “historic victory for the heroic nurses at St. Vincent who refused to budge until they secured the protections and staffing conditions their patients deserve.”
“They wanted nothing more than to return to work for months,” Trahan said in a statement, “and they risked their livelihoods on the picket line each day to achieve that goal.”
Nick Stoico can be reached at nick.stoico@globe.com.