WORCESTER, Mass., April 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- This
Sunday, April 11, the St. Vincent
Hospital nurses will begin their sixth week on strike as part of
their ongoing struggle to convince Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare to address a
growing patient safety crisis at the Worcester-based hospital.
As the strike continues, St. Vincent's for-profit owner is
projected to spend more than $33.5
million* to prolong the strike, inclusive of costs for
hundreds of replacement nurses paid twice as much as regular
staff, more than $30,000 a day for
police details, along with other costs associated with avoiding
meeting the nurses demands for better staffing and other patient
safety measures.
"It is truly disheartening to see our employer continue to throw
away millions of dollars to avoid accountability for providing
nurses the resources we need to keep our patients and our community
safe," said Marlena Pellegrino, RN,
longtime nurse at the hospital and Co-Chair of the nurses' local
bargaining unit with the Massachusetts Nurses Association. "In the
face of this corporate greed, our members are stronger than ever
and remain totally committed to doing whatever it takes to ensure
our patients finally receive the care and dignity they expect and
deserve from our community hospital."
Weekend Strike Events Keep Spirits High
A key factor buoying nurses' spirits throughout the strike are a
number of special events they themselves have planned along with
events organized by supporters, including two candlelight vigils
held for the nurses by Interfaith Worcester, a coalition of 21
faith-based organizations, who are standing behind the nurses'
cause and who have been calling for Tenet to meet its moral
obligation to the nurses and the patients of Worcester. Other events this weekend
include:
Saturday, April 10,
10 a.m. to 12 p.m. – Poor
People's Campaign Car Caravan circling the hospital and ending with
a rally on the strike line.
Saturday, April 10,
10 a.m. to 2 p.m. – Union
Troubadour Ben Grosscup will bring music and song to all of the
entrances on the line.
Saturday, April 10, beginning
at 12 p.m. – Grilling hotdogs and
hamburgers with State Senator Jamie
Eldridge and State Rep. Tami
Gouveia.
Sunday, April 11, 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. – Rally, union songs and
music on the strike line by DSA (Democratic Socialists of
America).
Sunday, April 11, beginning at
12 p.m. – Grilling sausage,
peppers and onions with the North Worcester County Legislative
Delegation – State Senator John
Cronin and State Reps Natalie
Higgins, Meg Kilcoyne and
Mike Kushmerek.
The strike began on March 8, after
Tenet refused to negotiate with the nurses over improvements the
nurses are seeking to address unsafe patient care conditions in the
hospital. The decision to strike followed earnest and
painstaking efforts over the last two years by the nurses to
convince Tenet to improve the patient care conditions at the
facility, poor conditions that have only been exacerbated by the
pandemic. Adding insult to injury, the same day nurses voted to
authorize the strike, Tenet announced profits of more than
$400 million.
The nurses' strike and their stand for safer patient care has
galvanized support from a variety of public officials, labor,
faith-based organizations and community advocates, including the
entire Worcester City Council, the Worcester state legislative delegation,
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator
Edward Markey, Congressman
Jim McGovern and Attorney General
Maura Healy, who have all visited
the nurses strike line. Senators Warren and Markey and
Congressman McGovern sent a letter to Tenet's CEO in Dallas urging Tenet to negotiate with the
nurses to address the nurses' concerns over needed staffing
improvements to ensure safe care.
Policymakers Work to Ensure Striking Nurses Access to COBRA
Subsidies
The nurses received another boost this past week as
Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley
(MA-07), Congressman Joe Courtney
(CT-02), Congressman James P.
McGovern (MA-02) and Congresswoman Katherine Clark (MA-05) worked with the U.S.
Department of Labor's Secretary Marty
Walsh to ensure that the St. Vincent nurses, along with
other striking workers across the nation are eligible for full
COBRA subsidies under the American Rescue Plan.
"As St. Vincent nurses continue organizing to demand fair
staffing ratios and patient safety, I'm proud we secured this
important guidance affirming that no worker should be asked to
choose between fair labor conditions and health care," said Rep.
McGovern. "This is a big win, not just for the nurses at St.
Vincent, but for workers across the country. Health care is a human
right and we will continue working to protect and expand access to
high quality care for all Americans."
"The nurses of St. Vincent Hospital deeply appreciate the
leadership provided by Department of Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and the Biden administration,
Congresswoman Pressley, Congressman McGovern, Congresswoman Clark
and Congressman Courtney for their efforts to provide COBRA
subsidies to ensure our 800 nurses have access to quality health
care for our families, as we now move into our sixth week of a
strike to ensure the safety of our patients and our community,"
said St. Vincent RN Pellegrino. "Being on strike is a
stressful process but having the support of such great leaders
gives us the strength to persevere and do what we know is
right."
In the last year alone, nurses have filed more than 600 official
"unsafe staffing" reports (more than 110 such reports have been
filed since Jan. 1, 2021) in which
nurses informed management in real time that patient care
conditions jeopardized the safety of their patients. The
nurses also report their patients in Worcester have experienced an increase in
patient falls, an increase in patients suffering from preventable
bed sores, potentially dangerous delays in patients receiving
needed medications and other treatments – all due to lack of
appropriate staffing, excessive patient assignments, and cuts to
valuable support staff.
Staffing Improvements Sought by the Nurses
As evidenced by its own report of massive profits, Tenet can
well afford the additional positions necessary to implement the MNA
staffing proposal that could end this strike. The money being spent
to prolong the strike could easily address the proposed staffing
improvements the nurses are seeking, which are staffing standards
on a par with other hospitals in Worcester and across the state, including:
- Improvements to the current staffing guidelines to ensure all
nurses have safe patient assignments and support staff to ensure
safe patient care. Throughout the hospital, Tenet has forced nurses
to consistently care for too many patients while it has cut
essential support staff positions. The nurses' staffing proposal
calls for improved limits on the number of patients nurses are
assigned on many units, including a resource nurse (to coordinate
care on the unit and provide support with complex cases) and a
commitment to provide support staff positions across all units. A
critical aspect of the staffing proposal is a four-patient
assignment on the medical surgical floors, which is consistent with
the standard of care provided at UMass Memorial Medical Center and
a number of other hospitals in the state.
- Creation of a pool of nurses who are expert in caring for
critically ill patients, which is essential to support nurses in
the emergency department who, in addition to taking care of five or
six patients, are also expected to care for patients in need of ICU
level care, who are waiting for a bed to open in the ICU. ICU and
trauma patients must have a nurse dedicated to no more than one or
two patients, which is the safe standard of care for these
patients.
- The addition of what are called "STAT and Rapid Response"
nurses, which are nurses who would be available to respond to
urgent and critical situations when a patient is suffering a code
or other serious decline in their condition on the medical/surgical
floors. When needed, these nurses assist in stabilizing and caring
for the patient until they can be transferred to the ICU. They are
especially important to support newly graduated nurses, who most
often work the off shift where there are often fewer experienced
nurses working. Again, UMass Memorial Medical Center provides this
level of support to its nurses.
For a more detailed review of the staffing crisis, efforts by
nurses to convince Tenet to address the crisis, as well as
proposals nurses are seeking to improve patient care, click here to
view a previous press release on the matter.
*The estimate of $34 million
is based on Tenet's public disclosure at the outset of the strike
that the cost of replacement nurses was $5.4 million for the first
week multiplied by the six weeks of the strike,
and also including the city's confirmed weekly cost for
police details of $210,000 multiplied by six
weeks. This figure does not include the hospital's cost for its own
expanded internal security force, the installation of special
high-tech camera systems outside the hospital entrances, and the
fleet of buses and vans the hospital is using to transport the
strike replacement nurses to and from the facility throughout the
day every day of the strike. The MNA last week sent a letter to
Tenet CEO Carolyn Jackson requesting
a copy of the contracts for the strike replacement nurses so that
the nurses and the public have a full picture of the resources
Tenet is using to prolong this strike. For a copy of that letter
and other information related to the strike, visit
www.massnurses.org/StVincentNurses.
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│ Twitter.com/MassNurses
Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the
largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts. Its 23,000 members
advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of
nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of
nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view
of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies
on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.
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SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association