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Bay Area Nurses Strike Giant Sutter Chain to Improve Patient Care |
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Nearly 5,000 registered nurses are taking a stand for improving patient care in a two-day strike at 15 Northern California hospitals. All but two of the hospitals are part of the giant Sutter Health chain and include some of the largest hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area.
California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro says (see video):
Sutter RNs have made a choice. They are dedicated to improving patient care conditions and they have decided to step up and protect their communities. Their commitment is about their patients and advocacy for those patients and protecting the community health.
Sutter should work with the nurses and CNA to turn this healthcare system around. It should treat its nurses with respect, and listen to them. The nurses are concerned with the impact of staffing decisions on patient care protections at Sutter hospitals, reductions in health care coverage and retirement security for Sutter RNs and management proposals to eliminate essential patient care services in Bay Area communities.
The nurses say the Sutter affiliates provide inadequate staffing, particularly to cover nurses during breaks and during their meals. They also say they have been unable to negotiate language with Sutter covering the lifting of patients, to lessen injuries to nurses and have not come to agreement on health care and pension benefits.
Jan Rodolfo, an oncology nurse at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland and Berkeley, told the San Francisco Bay Guardian:
Sutter is jeopardizing our patients by their staffing practices. We have been bargaining for umpteen months and we feel a strike is our only option.
Golden State union leaders are supporting the nurses and are calling for better conditions for patients. Says Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation:
Sutter Health has violated our trust and the fundamental safety of patients by refusing to ensure safe conditions for its patients. This company has sidestepped its patient-care responsibilities by deciding to close hospitals and reduce services simply so it may increase its bottom line. The labor movement of California supports the California Nurses Association and the Sutter RNs in their fight for patient safety, a fair contract, and quality patient care for our communities.
The strike, which began yesterday, will run until 7 a.m. PST tomorrow. At some of the hospitals, management has threatened to prolong the dispute with a lockout of nurses for up to an additional three days after the strike ends.
Management has been recruiting replacement nurses from as far away as Ohio. One flier, sent to nurses in Ohio and obtained by CNA/NNOC, offers “up to $90” per hour, airfare or other transportation to the Bay Area, and stays in “luxury accommodations in San Francisco. Minutes from the San Francisco shopping centers and downtown attractions. You are driven to the hospital from your luxury hotel.”
The flier, which lists a phone number for Health Source Global Staffing, says the nurses are “needed between October 8th and October 15”—even though the union informed management last week the strike would end Oct. 12. The union says this is a clear indication the hospitals plan to lock out some nurses after the strike is over.
DeMoro says:
This is a shameful waste of critical resources by Sutter that could be far better spent on addressing its serious patient care problems and protecting the retirement security of its RNs. The tone of revelry from the recruitment materials shows the disdain these fly-by-night agencies, and the hospital corporations that employ them, have for our communities, and that Sutter has for its RNs.
7 Comments
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Sounds just like any other corporation. I hope I see more nurses stepping up to the plate.
I watched my wife as she limped home from a long shift with too many patients.
People want better healthcare. How can you convince a young student to enter the nursing field when they are treated so badly?
Bravo-my local works with both SEIU 1199 and WSNA at U.Washingtons two medical centers, I have a friend from HS still nursing in Eugene, lets just say our 30 year reunion is passed. To borrow fron skilled trades, a plumber can close the toilets, electricains make it dark, but nurses can freeze the bed pan or literaly squeeze where it hurts. They don’t, but as the Governator found out they can and will-the rest of mousy union types should learn that lesson
Union members, Taking in the Republican candidates debate the other day, it became clear to me that they and many Democrats will soon take-up the issue of entitlements; retirement and health care. They’ve been bleeding America of its treasure, and human status for the past 7 years, and soon I predict they’re going to see Social Security and Medicare in crisis. They’re going to come to the American people with privatizing schemes and asking all of us to dig in to underwrite a greater share of those personal workers benefits. I say when the sparks start to fly that we all stand together and recommend that government get the money for people entitlements from the same source as they have to fund the US Military and to fund their needless, bloody, vicious and wasteful war in Iraq!
My 27 year old daughter recently became a registered nurse. She’s working at the University Hospital a part of University Health System in San Antonio (the County Hospital) She strained her back several nights ago as she is forced to work with 10-15 patients each shift!
NNOC is trying to organize the RNs and I will do my part to support them. NNOC also supports H.R. 676 the only REAL healthcare legislation that will address the crisis in our healthcare system!
Inhumane and unsafe working conditions cannot produce QUALITY HEALTHCARE! Never have and never will!
When the CNA and The nurses at a county Hospital hear in San Mateo California asked for help on the picket line I was glad to help! I walked two days and was at the Rally. I played a couple of songs on a CD player for the Nurses ” My Nursing Heart by Anne Feeney and National health Care Now. Music and Chants keep the picket line going. I only wish i could have played Anne Feeney’s Song about scabs for the SCABS inside the hospital.
I made up this chant:
On the line, on the line.
Come and walk the picket line.
We will win our fight
For Patients rights
On the picket line.
And this song from an old song for which I have permission to change the words. I have the melody on a CD If some one wants it.
Because We’re Right We’ll Stand and fight
We find it very, very hard to understand,
When Sutter Health makes a million, million grand
Why they don’t bargain when we bring them our demands.
Because we’re right we’ll stand and fight.
We’ll stand and fight For patients rights.
We’ll stand and fight because we’re right
We earn for them every single dollar that they make
And now our benefits they say they want to take.
Don’t they recognize they’re making a mistake.
Because we’re right we’ll stand and fight.
We’ll stand and fight because we’re right.
It not just ours but our patients fight.
We’ll stand and fight because we’re right
The CNA, the CNA, the CNA is here to stay.
Because we’re nurses caring for patients,
Every night and every Day.
Because we’re right we’ll stand and fight.
We’ll stand and fight because we’re right.
It not just ours but our patients fight.
We’ll stand and fight because we’re right.
As a student working toward a nursing degree, I have heard a lot about overworked nurses in hospitals, especially in California. Yet California community colleges and unviversities are not turning out enough nursing graduates to meet the growing nursing demands. Is it because of economics, politics, or bureaucracy. The United States needs to take drastic steps soon to fix the problem as hospitals are not allowed to turn away critically ill patients because they don’t have nurses.
I have been a nurse for 8 years. I just finished doing a 7 month assignment in april at alta bates in Berekely. They are not lying. You don’t get a break. I took 2 months off after that so I wouldn’t quit nursing altogether. Don’t get me wrong, the staff is nice, but the working conditions leave something to be desired. As a traveller, I was required to take a break, and so I did, but I NEVER got out on time and several days I would be there until 9am and my shift ends at 730am. Usually for my break, I would just grab my charts and hide and eat while I charted like mad hoping to get out at a decent time. This would most often be the only break I would get in a 12 hour day. I wouldn’t get the other 2 15-minute breaks, and like I said, I was required to take this break which always got me out late. My co-workers who were staff, usually didn’t even take 1 15-minute break let alone a 30 minute meal break in an entire shift.
Good luck to all the staff at Alta Bates. You deserve a little respect.