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After an organizing and negotiating marathon that has often confronted bitter management opposition, 1,300 registered nurses (RN’s) at the second largest private hospital in the western U.S. yesterday reached a tentative agreement on their first contract days before nurses at the largest hospital are set to vote on union representation. In negotiations since February members of the California Nurses’ Association (CNA) at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center recently held two one-day walkouts ---suffering four-day lockouts in return---in order to end management stonewalling and win an agreement (see WIT’s for Oct. 23, and Nov. 12, 2002). The three-year agreement answers the nurses’ central concern of under-staffing with binding arbitration over staffing levels, and also provides for twenty-one-percent raises over the course of the contract, and a pension plan with guaranteed annual employer contributions of four to nine-percent of salary.