A new Bloomberg BNA special report, Collective Bargaining in the Health Care Industry, has just been released. It uses data and details from contracts signed in 2012 to tell the complete story of health care unions’ gains and concessions. As I edited the report I found a lot of interesting facts. Here are some of my favorites:

• There were more than 150 strikes and lockouts in health care workplaces in 2012—almost all of which took place in a handful of California hospitals.

• The average health care employer gave workers a lower first-year wage increase in 2012 (1.95 percent) than in 2011 (2.14 percent). But, over the entire term of the contract, unionized workers actually came out ahead in 2012 (2.12 percent per year over three years), compared with 2011 (2.09 percent over three years).

• Of the four labor organizations that negotiated more than five contracts in 2012, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees gained the largest average yearly wage increases, followed by National Nurses United, Service Employees International Union, and American Nurses Association affiliates.

• Beyond annual wage hikes, about one contract in six promised some sort of one-time cash payout, usually in the form of a signing bonus or lump-sum payment.

• Of every dollar of compensation paid out by unionized health care employers in 2012, more than one-third went to benefits.

• The biggest non-compensation issues at the bargaining table were workplace safety and nurse-to-patient staffing ratios.

• The most significant court opinions and National Labor Relations Board decisions of the year focused on nursing homes and rehabilitation centers, not hospitals.

For more information on Collective Bargaining in the Health Care Industry, visit www.bna.com. A companion report, on organizing in the health care industry, was published last fall and discussed in an earlier blog post.