N.J. Supreme Court: Striking Nurses Entitled to Unemployment Benefits

Barbara Jones, RN, worked at Lourdes Medical Center for 28 years before the strike. “There was no rhyme or reason for what they did. I think it was their goal to destroy the union.”

This post brought to us by Katrina Blomdahl, writer-researcher for RNs Working Together, which is a coalition of 10 AFL-CIO unions, representing more than 250,000 nurses nationwide. 

Sometimes justice comes in ways you least expect it. 

That’s the case for nearly 100 nurses from Willingboro, N.J., represented by JNESO. Two weeks ago, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that striking nurses at Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County, a 259-bed nonprofit hospital, were entitled to unemployment benefits for the time they spent on picket lines.

(JNESO, which refers to the Union Division of the State Nurses Association, began in 1958 as the Jersey Nurses Economic Security Organization and now is affiliated with the Operating Engineers union.) 

The strike started in 2004 and lasted for two years. The workers who filed for unemployment at the beginning of the strike in 2004 were ruled to be eligible for 26 weeks of benefits. New Jersey law allows striking workers to collect unemployment benefits, provided they do not cause their employer to suffer a “stoppage of work.”

In a 6-1 decision, the court ruled the nurses were entitled to their benefits because the hospital continued to maintain its patient levels and “function at full service.”

JNESO Executive Director Virginia Treacy, RN, says the hospital 

assured the community that everything was fine. They took out ads saying that the quality of care had not changed. And they hired nurses from the U.S. Nursing Corporation [a temporary employment agency] to replace us. 

Although Lourdes Health System opposed the unemployment applications and made every possible appeal, the buck finally stopped at the door of the state Supreme Court, which rejected the hospital’s argument that the strike caused a loss of revenue equivalent to a “stoppage of work.” 

According to the high court, unemployment benefits can sometime function as a safety net for workers during strikes. Justice J. Albin, writing for the majority, points out that the governing statute: 

…enables ordinary workers, who otherwise could not afford to leave work to protest for increased wages or decent working conditions, the lifeline of unemployment benefits so long as there is no stoppage of work at their place of employment. The statute has no exemptions and does not rank in terms of importance of industry or profession. 

Treacy says the decision upholds a small segment of the law, and while that is a good thing, the bottom line is getting lost in the press: 

You normally would not collect money for striking, but here the employer didn’t care how much money they spent during the dispute. They were willing to spend whatever it took. They weren’t trying to reach a contract settlement with the nurses. They were spending a million dollars a month to bust the union. They had unlimited resources—I think they would have paid anything to get rid of us. 

Barbara Jones, a labor and delivery nurse, was one of the 97 strikers who filed for unemployment insurance out of the 240 nurses who walked the picket line. But when she received the first check, she sent it back. She had already found another job and figured she’d be back on her feet soon enough. 

A nurse at Lourdes for 28 years, Jones thinks the hospital was trying to send a message to other local nurses who didn’t have a union: 

I think they felt that if they could break us, then they could use that as leverage against anyone else who wanted to organize. The way they did it was horrible. They turned people’s lives upside down. 

After two years, the strike ended, with some nurses finding other jobs and some retiring. Still, Treacy is proud to count last week’s decision in the win column: 

It is a victory because it shows employers that they can’t just buy their way out of a labor dispute. You just can’t do it—at least not in New Jersey. 

In the end, I’ve never been prouder of a group of people in my whole life. They did a great job standing up for themselves, and they took a hit for it. The chief steward had been there since the day the hospital opened, and she finished her career on the strike line. The really sad part is that the hospital will never recoup. Nobody wins in a strike. 

Although Jones had to find a new job and postpone retirement, she doesn’t look back: 

I can honestly say if the same scenario came up, I would do the exact same thing again. I have no regrets.

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