Whidbey General Hospital and the nurses’s union reached a tentative contract agreement last week, potentially ending nearly a year of negotiations.

In a contract summary released by the union, nurses would receive a 2 percent pay bump in April and another half percent in October. They’d receive a 2.5 percent increase each of the following two years.

The contract includes pay increases in other situations, such as a 25-cent per hour increase in standby pay.

The bargaining team also negotiated agreements on workplace issues, including new language stating that nurses who take family and medical leave can do so over a 12-month period — they don’t have to take their time all at once.

Nurses whom the hospital wants to suspend or discharge must be given the opportunity to have a meeting beforehand, with a union representative present, to state their case, and the hospital has to present them with the charges in writing.

The hospital also agreed in the proposed contract that nurses will not automatically be disciplined for failing a drug test if there is no evidence they were impaired on the job. Off-duty recreational marijuana use also isn’t grounds for drug testing, since that drug is legal in Washington state.

The union summary also includes issues floated by the hospital administration that the union bargaining team said it blocked. One of those was a proposal that nurses not be able to take a 15-minute uninterrupted rest break.

Another was a proposal that management could monitor union meetings.

A majority of nurses still must approve the agreement, said Ruth Schubert, a spokeswoman for the Washington State Nurses Association.

The contract, if accepted, would expire in April 2019.

“We are very happy with this contract and the bargaining team is recommending a ‘yes’ vote,” she said.

“The fact that we were able to fight off some really negative proposals from Whidbey General management is significant. We were able to fight the negative proposals off because the nurses stuck together and because of the wonderful support we got from the community.”

Under the terms of the agreement, the hospital cannot comment on the agreement until it is ratified, said Whidbey General spokesman Keith Mack.

If the contract is approved, nurses who signed it will get a bonus of up to $1,500, depending on their work status and when they were hired.

A full copy of the statement is available online at www.wsna.org