The Service Employees International Union and Catholic Healthcare West will today announce the settlement of a first contract that will cover 9,000 workers at twenty hospitals run by California?s largest non-profit hospital system. The contract is the culmination of several years of hard fought organizing and often heated negotiating, and an important breakthrough in recent efforts by health care unions to organize private sector hospitals and health service providers in California. Among the contract provisions won by the employees are a ten percent annual increase in pay and benefits for each of the contract?s two years, health insurance fully paid for by the employer, and the creation of union/management committees to address the understaffing problems that were one of the biggest issues in the organizing drive and negotiations.