Should nurses strike?

SmilingBluEyes · May 27, 2003

OOOOLD argument here; many threads exist on the subject. It's rife with controversy and strong beliefs on all sides. I think YES, in some cases, nurses striking IS justified; although some will cry "patient abandoment" and the like. Sometimes, when conditions are extremely unsafe for nurses and patients alike, it's the only way to get anyone to "listen".....

And would I cross the picket line? NO---I would not--- unless my family EATING and HAVING A ROOF OVER THEIR HEADS depended on it---about that, I feel strongly. Some feel just as strongly the other way. It's all been hashed out here before, MANY TIMES. Just check the archives. Good luck and happy hunting.

Home Health Columnist / Guide · May 27, 2003

Students/members can do a search here for most topics---strikes and collective barganing covered extensively in past.

Search engine:

https://allnurses.com/forums/search.php?s=

Or peruse the pages here...

StinkyMcStinker · Jun 5, 2003

Nurses have just as much a right to strike as other fields and professions do, and "picket line crossers" have just as much a right to do that as well.

teeituptom, BSN, RN · Jun 5, 2003

Howdy ya'll

from deep in the heart of texas

I love it when nurses strike, then I get to cross picket lines and collect stike pay which really is quite significant, I love it,

RyanRN · Jun 8, 2003

"------- teeituptom Senior Member-

Just remember what goes around comes around, Some day she(/he) will get her(/his) just rewards----" (NURSE VS>NURSE THREAD)

Yeppers, truer words were never spoken!

__________________

pickledpepperRN · Jun 9, 2003

Patients, strikebreakers, and strikers opinion presented (of course not in depth).

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/05/29/BA310473.DTL

Striking nurses at new gigs

80% from 2 East Bay hospitals working as strike goes on

Jason B. Johnson, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, May 29, 2003

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/05/29/BA310473.DTL

A bitter 6-month-old strike by nurses at two East Bay hospitals is already the longest of its kind ever in California, and it shows no sign of ending.

But you won't see groups of angry strikers outside Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo and Pinole or a shortage of nurses inside.

Day-to-day activity appears just as it did before the strike began Nov. 4: Accident victims are rushed into the 22-bed emergency room at the San Pablo hospital, and nurses rush quickly from station to station.

The key difference is that replacement nurses, recruited from outside the state, are attending to patients. And 80 percent of the 450 striking nurses are working at other Bay Area hospitals.

"Most of us have been doing this about three to five years," said emergency room nurse William Adams of Tennessee, who began working at Doctors in February. Tenet Healthcare, which owns the hospitals, and U.S. Nursing, a provider of relief staff, take care of living arrangements for Adams and the other replacements.

Picketing outside Doctors Medical Center has been sporadic, and representatives from the nurses union and management have not met in weeks.

The strike has widened the divide between Tenet, the nation's second- largest hospital chain, and the 50,000-member California Nurses Association, one of the state's largest nursing unions.

Since their contract expired Aug. 31, nurses have demanded that Tenet establish a pension plan with guaranteed monthly payments and health care for retirees -- benefits that all other Bay Area hospital chains provide, union officials say.

Tenet has opposed pensions, offering instead to boost employee pay and increase the amount it matches worker contributions to a 401(k) retirement plan from 3 to 5 percent. The company implemented this "best final offer" on April 15.

In the meantime, Tenet has been staffing the Contra Costa hospitals with as many as 165 temporary nurses and is planning to hire permanent nurses to replace those who refuse to come back to work, Doctors spokesman Michel Burleson said.

"We're not going to talk to them about retiree benefits or pensions," said Burleson.

Tenet spokesman David Langness put it even more bluntly when he described pensions as a thing of the past.

Earlier this month, Tenet forged an alliance with the Service Employees International Union to increase wages as much as 29 percent over the next four years in return for a no-strike guarantee. The agreement does not include pension benefits.

The California Nurses Association has gone to court to block the agreement, which spokesman Chuck Idelson called "deplorable."

"What you have there is Tenet attempting to hand-pick a union it feels will be more compliant," said Idelson.

CNA has contracts at three Tenet hospitals, in Redding, San Luis Obispo and Doctors. An organizing attempt is also under way at San Ramon Hospital. Nurses in Santa Barbara staged a protest at Tenet's corporate headquarters in support of the striking Bay Area nurses.

Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of CNA, compared the Doctors strike to a line in the sand.

"They're leading the fight for the future of other nurses," said DeMoro. "This is one of the most heated, protracted battles we've ever seen in the Bay Area."

One of the dispute's casualties is Rida Villanueva, who left Doctors, where she'd worked most of her 10-year nursing career, most recently in the hospital's cardiac care unit, for a similar job at Kaiser Hospital in Vallejo.

Villanueva said it was strange going to a new hospital and getting used to a new way of doing things. Now she isn't sure she would go back to Doctors if the strike were to end.

"In six more months, I'll be able to have a 401(k) that Tenet deemed to be such a great thing," said Villanueva, who was a cardiac care nurse at Doctors. "I'll have it all."

At Doctors, several replacement nurses said the biggest challenge is finding supplies and paperwork when they first get to a hospital. Dealing with new patients, they said, is far easier.

"Patient care is basically the same wherever you are," said emergency room nurse Jennifer Butler of North Carolina, who has been at Doctors since early January.

"Once you come in, you just talk to them," said Butler. "There are questions; some are nervous. (But) we love what we do, we come in smiling."

Some visitors to the San Pablo hospital said they found it hard to tell the difference between the new and old nurses.

One patient, who had X-rays taken of his back, said he was impressed by the temporary workers. He said he feels sorry for the nurses still on strike and hopes the dispute can be resolved soon.

"They treated me well," said the San Pablo senior, who asked that his name not be used. "I have some friends who work here as volunteers, and they think the care is better now."

E-mail Jason B. Johnson at [email protected].

nurse2002 · Jun 11, 2003

Originally posted by RyanRN
"------- teeituptom Senior Member-
Just remember what goes around comes around, Some day she(/he) will get her(/his) just rewards----" (NURSE VS>NURSE THREAD)

Yeppers, truer words were never spoken!

__________________

:confused:

bender73 · Jun 19, 2003

No. I am tired of seeing nurses striking outside of hospitals. It can scare patients for one - I am sure the patient feels real safe seeing half the staff outside before being admitted. Do your job. If you don't like working hard...find another career.

pickledpepperRN · Jun 19, 2003

If your hospital became unsafe for patients and your license, a union was voted in, and management refused to talk what would you do?

1. Quit (mass resignation a possibility)?

2. Stay and do my best?

3. Strike?

roxannekkb · Jun 19, 2003

>>No. I am tired of seeing nurses striking outside of hospitals. It can scare patients for one - I am sure the patient feels real safe seeing half the staff outside before being admitted. Do your job. If you don't like working hard...find another career

Well, nurses are doing precisely that, finding another career. And there's a big difference between working hard and doing your job, than being forced to work under horrendous conditions, work unsafe, be forced to do overtime, and be treated like crap. A big difference. And while strikes may "scare" patients, it certainly does them no good to be cared for by exhausted, stressed out nurses. Imagine being a patient on a cancer floor, for example, and finding out the nurse caring for was pulled from OB, and hasn't a clue about all those nice drugs you're taking. Or you find out that your nurse is entering her 18th hour of work. Or that your nurse has 12 other patients besides you. Now that would scare me, more so than seeing a strike!

Your attitude, I'm sorry to say (and not to make a personal attack) is one of the reasons that working conditions do not improve. If nurses just put up and shut up, then nothing will change. Not for nurses or patients. And the nursing exodus will continue.

pickledpepperRN · Jun 19, 2003

Without a strike I am scared for the patients in hospitals.

People have reason to be scared. If they are not it is because they just don't know.