ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) - There are rising concerns from the nurses union at Rochester General Hospital surrounding retention rates and fair wages. Rochester Union of Nurses and Allied Professionals, or RUNAP, settled a contract with Rochester Regional Health in the fall of 2023. There are now questions surrounding the system's commitment to keeping staff on board, following a nationwide boost in the reliance on travel nurses. From 2019 to 2024, RGH president and Chief Operating Officer Tammy Snyder says the facility has spent $70 million on on-site nurses, adding the RRH network is trying to minimize costs on travel nurses. "Around the holidays, RGH reached out to us with a proposal for a retention program. Nurses in the adult ED and med surgery units would have the opportunity to sign on for a three or five-year contract that had monetary increments attached every 6 months. It had claw backs of significance. There were a lot of areas where it was concerning about those claw backs under what contingencies. They told us they didn't have any language for exceptions if a nurse went out on disability. They'd be responsible for paying back those bonuses. And, if they were terminated, there were a lot of issues. We're starting to negotiate that," said Gillian Kingsley, an RGH nurse who serves as RUNAP's secretary. Both sides say they want to work together to not only reduce the costly reliance on agency nurses, but to keep wages competitive. "As a collective leadership team, we knew we needed to really do something different to try and reduce our reliance on agency RNs. At the start of the new year, at the system level, we put together this RN recruitment package. From a timing perspective, that's really why we chose to do this now because we really aim to reduce our costly spends in 2025. Right now, RGH has about 37 or 38 percent of agency nurses. Our goal is to decrease that percentage. We certainly know we are the outlier, RRH overall, compared to our national peers. Many of them are down in the teens in terms of percentage of agency RN staff," said Tammy Snyder, RGH's president and COO. Despite this, nurses with RGH feel there is still a ways to go to meet in the middle. "We hope RGH is truly committed to retaining nurses. If they are, then they would return to the table and continue to negotiate in a meaningful way. We want to work together as a team. We have a shared goal that we want to provide the very best care possibly for our community. We just wish we could do it together," said Kingsley. Snyder says she does not expect fallout in staffing over the concerns. There is also no option for a strike, she says, because of the contract agreements in 2023. Full RUNAP letter: