Valley Medical Center’s nurses and other health-care workers took to the sidewalks outside the hospital late Wednesday afternoon, proclaiming “We’ll fight for our patients all day long.”

Between 200 and 300 members of SEIU Healthcare 1199NW, which represents about 1,450 workers at Valley, and their supporters walked and rallied on their own time to raise awareness about their contract dispute with Valley Medical Center.

Passing motorists on Southwest 43rd Street in Renton honked in support.

Theresa Braungardt, Valley’s chief nursing officer, said hospital operations continued smoothly during the informational picketing and rally.

The top issue is staffing; the union maintains patient care suffers when nurses must backfill for nurses on break or at lunch that can double the number of patients for whom they care. But also on the table are loss of a training fund, higher health-care costs, a reduction in Valley’s financial contribution to retirement and no raises for three years, according to the union.

“We are not just mad, we are fired up. We are not just angry, we are inspired. We are not just irate, we are motivated,” Diane Sosne, a registered nurse and president of SEIU 1199NW, told the workers.

“We are standing up for quality care for our patients. We are standing up for self-respect and dignity. We are standing up for our families. We are standing up for our children and our grandchildren. We are standing up for our community,” she said.

Valley Medical officials won’t discuss publicly the details of negotiations, which are being conducted with a mediator. The next sessions are July 20 and Aug. 20. The contract expired on June 30.

Karyn Beckley, Valley Medical’s senior vice president of human resources and marketing, said 53 percent of Valley’s employees, including doctors and managers and other unionized employees, are covered by Valley’s benefit package, which she said is in the top tier in King County.

She noted that 93 percent of Valley’s employees participated this spring in an employee satisfaction survey on such things as benefits; about 90 percent indicated they were satisfied. Valley’s voluntary turnover rate is under 5 percent, she said.

There was a loud “no” from the rally crowd when union president Sosne asked whether her members were happy.

Representatives from the Washington State Labor Council, the Machinists Union and the Office and Professional Employees International Union also spoke, as did King County Council member Dave Upthegrove.

“We will fight with you until you win,” said Lynne Dodson, secretary-treasurer of the Washington State Labor Council, which represents 400,000 labor-union members in Washington state.

“Nurses’ working conditions, health-care professionals’ working conditions, those are patient-healing conditions,” she said.

Tina Carpenter, a medical technologist at Northwest Hospital in Seattle, spoke. The contract there also expired on June 30 and contracts are under way.

“We are working hard to make improvements at Northwest,” she said. “And we know that when we all stand together across UW Medicine, we can win great things for our patients and our co-workers.”

Beckley, the Valley Medical vice president, said contracts are negotiated separately across UW Medicine. At Valley policy direction comes from the administrative team and trustees, she said.

No standard staffing level is being imposed upon hospital, she said.

Staffing levels are reviewed four times a day, she said, and are adjusted, based on the medical conditions of patients.

John Holden, president of the Machinists Union, District 751, with more than 33,000 members in Washington, told the health workers his union understands the importance of training to improve skills and advance in a career.

“In aerospace we know that there’s a direct correlation between training and obtaining quality outcome,” he said.

The union is concerned about Valley’s staffing levels, he said.

“It concerns us deeply that you may be forced to make choices between which patients I give care to and which patient I am forced to make wait, because I don’t have enough staffing to get the work done and my responsibilities done during the work day. And we stand with you to get that fixed.”