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Union Members Pitch in to Help Striking Nurses in Appalachia |
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For nearly five weeks, the nurses at Appalachian Regional Healthcare (ARH) hospitals in Kentucky and West Virginia have been on the picket line to gain better care for their patients at great personal cost.
Today, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney announced the federation and online donors will be contributing $20,000 to the AFL-CIO Community Services Network to help the striking nurses. This donation comes just three days after the working men and women of the AFL-CIO delivered a truckload of food worth some $10,000 for the nurses in the Hazard, Ky., area. More than 200 union members and allies distributed the food to striking nurses throughout Kentucky and rallied in support of the strikers. Next Saturday, workers will deliver another $10,000 truckload of food to Beckley, W.Va., for striking nurses in that state. (See video.)
At a get-out-the-vote rally Thursday in Hazard, Ky., AFSCME President Gerald McEntee invited some of the striking nurses on stage and gave them a $10,000 check on behalf of his union. (You can help out. Click here to make a donation to support the nurses.)
Nearly 700 nurses, members of the United American Nurses (UAN), have been on strike at nine ARH hospitals in Kentucky and West Virginia since Oct. 1. The nurses are concerned that management’s staffing decisions and rampant mandatory overtime are preventing them from giving patients the best possible care. In contract negotiations, ARH is proposing modest pay raises but then is demanding to cut holiday pay and increase health care premiums, effectively wiping out the raises.
In addition, members of the United Steelworkers (USW) and Mine Workers (UMWA) are joining solidarity walks with the nurses to call on ARH to recognize the nurses’ freedom to call for better patient care. Some 2,700 USW members at ARH hospitals walked out for three weeks in the spring. UAN represents registered nurses at the ARH facilities and USW represents certified nurse aides, licensed practical nurses, housekeepers, maintenance and clerical workers at ARH hospitals. Ironically, the ARH hospitals were started by legendary union leader John L. Lewis to help sick miners.
Sweeney says:
The nurses at ARH are at the front line of a battle being waged by corporations against patient care for the sake of their bottom line. All 10 million members of the AFL-CIO stand in support of the nurses as they continue their struggle to provide quality care for their patients.
Striking nurse Kathy Ford told WYMT-TV in Hazard the solidarity of other union members helps steel the nurses for their fight:
It gives you so much more strength to take back home and to pass that on to our line and help our people to become stronger.
Kentucky State AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan says union members will do whatever it takes to get a fair contract for the nurses:
It’s such an important strike that we’re not going to let these nurses suffer any more. We’re going to do everything we can to help them survive.
2 Comments
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If you look at the ARH’s website, their mission statement on the opening page does not reflect the behavior of these non-profit medical centers and hospitals where nurses can’t get the respect they need.
The southeast portion of the U.S. where they operate is beautiful, but for years has been largely populated with poor and underemployed people. Unions have been trying to lift folks out of poverty since before the turn of the century in the mines and mills of the region. Where corporations were able to shut down factories and outsource, they did so with speed and haste and didn’t care what misery they left behind. Union busting is treated like a sport.
Jobs are important, but make it a job that allows a person to earn a living wage,medical benefits, and a pension when it’s no longer an option to work another day after a life of work. These jobs are few and far between across our nation; they are fewer and spread over miles of God’s country in the Appalachian region.
The ARH should take a page out of Kaiser Permanente’s book. Professionals who wish to organize should be welcomed—there is a shortage of nurses in this country as it is. Why on earth would we not give them the respect and compensation that they so richly deserve? Or is it that poor rural patients deserve a lower standard and quality of care than more affluent urban patients?
I feel that the nurses need a fair deal for the health and protection of their patients. If they are tired from working to many hours, they can’t give their best effort. President Sweeney says that this is corporate greed by ARH and I tend to agree. thank you