23,000 RNs in CA to hold a one-day strike on Sept. 22

[scecile]

http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/entry/23000-rns-to-hold-one-day-strike-september-22/

23,000 RNs to Hold One-Day Strike September 22

Demands for Cuts in Patient Care, RN Takeaways, and Support for Kaiser Strikers Key Focus; Walkout to Affect 34 California Hospitals

More than 23,000 registered nurses at 34 Northern and Central California hospitals will hold a one-day strike Thursday, September 22, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United announced today.

The strike affects two of California's largest and most profitable hospital chains, Sutter Health and Kaiser Permanente, as well as Children's Hospital Oakland.

A centerpiece of the strike at the Sutter hospitals is Sutter's unprecedented demands for some 200 sweeping cuts in patient care and nurses standards on top of months of widespread reductions in availability of patient care services, motivated by commercial concerns, throughout the greater Bay Area.

Kaiser RNs will engage in sympathy strike activity to support other frontline healthcare workers who face demands for significant cuts in health benefits, which follow a steady series of local service reductions Kaiser has been enforcing for nurses and patients in Northern and Central California.

For Children's Oakland RNs, it will mark their third strike over efforts by the hospital administration to limit healthcare coverage for nurses and their families.

"Nurses will not accept drastic, unwarranted, and unconscionable cuts that harm our communities, harm our colleagues, and harm our families," said CNA Co-president Deborah Burger, RN.

Sutter, for example, wants to restrict the ability of many of its nurses to advocate for patients in making clinical assessments of staffing and other patient needs; force nurses to work when sick, exposing fragile patients and themselves to illness; subject nurses to arbitrary discipline based on benchmark budget goals; and sharply raise out-of-pocket costs by thousands of dollars for nurses and their families. All despite amassing $3.7 billion in profits the past six years.

"We staunchly refuse to be silenced on patient care protections," said Sharon Tobin, a 24-year RN at Sutter Mills-Peninsula in Burlingame. "A common theme throughout management's proposals is removing our presence on committees that address important patient care issues and nursing practices. As nurses, we speak up, and we insist on standards that safeguard our patients, but Sutter doesn't want to hear about anything that might cut into their huge profits."

"As nurses we are the frontline defense for patient safety. In every community Sutter corporate has a presence but has placed the safety of our patients and our communities second to their profits," says Efrén Garza, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center RN. "Sutter has cut healthcare services in every area that serves those persons most in need, as well as those which provide women's healthcare. We refuse to bend to Sutter's ideology of placing profits before people and will continue to address those issues which attempt to compromise our patients' health and wellbeing and the nursing profession."

Kaiser RNs will strike in sympathy and support for Kaiser social workers, optometrists, psychologists, and other frontline workers who are striking September 22 to protest substantial reductions in healthcare and retirement coverage.

Like Sutter, Kaiser is extremely wealthy, and hardly needs to be exacting severe cuts from employees, reporting over $1.9 billion in profits last year alone.

"When we are all struggling to keep our head above water it is unconscionable for Kaiser Permanente to attempt to extract cuts from direct healthcare workers," said Catherine Kennedy, who is a neonatal intensive care nursery RN at Kaiser Roseville. "If Kaiser wants to cut, it should be from the 14 Kaiser executives who are making over $1 million dollars a year, not the healthcare employees who have devoted themselves to the patients and the community,"

Children's Oakland RNs have been in dispute with hospital managers for a year over hospital demands, especially increases in out-of-pocket healthcare costs they say are punitive and would make it prohibitively expensive for nurses to bring their own children to get care at the hospital where they work. The employer has also refused to address the safe staffing issues of charge nurses not having a patient assignment and providing break relief at times when it does not interfere with patient care needs in the professional judgment of the nurse.

"Children's administration has decided in the past to spend millions of dollars on forcing nurses to strike rather than on employee benefits and safe staffing," says Children's RN Martha Kuhl. "They are taking advantage of the economic times and trying to roll back improvements we have won over many years through our CNA contract. Everyone deserves healthcare and if nurses can't afford healthcare, who will be able to? I am a caregiver and patient advocate and that extends into my community as well."

Sutter hospitals affected by the strike include Alta Bates Summit facilities in Berkeley and Oakland, Mills-Peninsula in Burlingame and San Mateo, Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley and San Leandro, and Sutter hospitals in Vallejo, Santa Rosa, Antioch, Novato, and Lakeport.

Kaiser hospitals affected by the RN sympathy strike include facilities in Sacramento, Roseville, San Jose, Santa Clara, Redwood City, San Francisco, South San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond, Hayward, Fremont, Santa Rosa, San Rafael, Vallejo, Vacaville, Walnut Creek, Fresno, Stockton, Manteca, and Modesto.

[mrr5745]

Good for them!!! We have to begin standing up for ourselves!!!

[kcmylorn]

Ditto.

[kcmylorn]

I wish there were more nurses reading this thread. This affects all of us. Doesn't matter which state we live in. These nurses in california can not fight the battle for all nurses accross the country. And by no means is the end to the challenges we all face in our own workplaces. We have to take inspiration from them and apply it to our situation. Leadership is by example, it is an active process, requires some effort, courage, committment and williness to to be a participant. We have for too long sat on the side lines and by doing so, allowed the PTB go unchallenged, put faith by our pasivity in CEO's and administrators who were no worthy of that faith/trust, allowed them to make off with unchallenged card-blanc decision making power, and money control that put this healthcare system of ours where it is. That put nursing and staffing and illness levels where it is today.

[Chico David, BSN, RN]

It's going to be very interesting to see how this plays out. By way of disclosure, I am part of the union in question - and a leader in that union - so am totally supportive of this action. I'm fairly sure this is the largest single job action by nurses in history. And I'm also fairly sure that, even in this economic climate, the number of nurses willing and available to scab on these strikes will not be anywhere near adequate.

The existance of staffing agencies that specialize in strikes and the willingness of nurses to cross other nurses' lines has limited the power of the strike weapon. Strike a single hospital or a small chain and they just bring in replacements - usually from states without unions where wages are low and the nurses desperate. A strike costs the hospital money and causes a PR hit, but they can pretty much keep up business as usual if they are willing to spend the money. But with this, there just aren't enough replacements out there.

By the way: Most, if not all, of the hospitals involved have very healthy balance sheets. But like a lot of other employers - in healthcare and elsewhere - they see the tough economy and tight job market as an opportunity to roll back wages, benefits and staffing protections so they can spend even more on CEO salaries and consultant fees.

[kcmylorn]

:yeah:Chico David- and all 23,000 of you guys , given them hell and make one big noise about it. Bring thoses CEO money mongral walls down. Don't hold any facts and data back especially the CEO salaries with no cut to their salaries- in a recession with high unemployment. I may be on the other coast but I'll be with you all in spirit on 22 Sept 2011. I know we have some gutsy nurses here on the east coast, but maybe if they see California making a major comotion, they'll follow suit. God knows we all could use it.:yeah::yeah::yeah::yeah:

[nicurn001]

I don't know about you Chico , but I know my spouse who works at a Kaiser facility has not heard of their plans to maintain staffing and patient care during the one day strike . Interestingly enough it has also be quiet from the strike breakers upon this notice board .Saw that a strike breaking agency was advertising for CA RN's starting as of today .

[vcurrent2]

I'm a travel RN our of Oregon and have been contacted by 3 agencies to work. They are offering $3,000-$6,000 for 3-7 days working, NOT including travel and housing! Why don't they take that money and apply it towards what the nurses are asking for!!!??? I obviously refused the jobs. There is more to life than money. TRAVEL NURSES, DON'T CROSS THOSE LINES! STAND WITH YOUR PEERS AND MAKE A STATEMENT! Good luck guys. We're here for you.

[nicurn001]

With the profits being made by these healthcare corporations make ,they could easily ensure peaceful relations with their employees , rather than provocatively threaten takeaways of benefits etc..But maybe that would effect the CEO's / corporate officers bonus , perks and pay . Now that would be seen to be really disasterous to them , how would they be able to hire and keep real talent , like them !!!.

[kcmylorn]

Maybe some of the statements and feeling posted here on allnurses related to these CEO's and their salaries should be read/quoted at the strike for the entire nation of CEO's to hear. Maybe then these CEOs and their financial entourage would get the idea, that it's not just 23,000 nurses in California fed up and aware of their greed and and selfishness, it's the entire country of nurses!!

[MAISY, RN-ER, BSN, RN]

Nursing on the whole should be supportive, and push for legislation in their own states for ratios and patient safety. I would like to see the ANA, ENA and other nursing related organizations place a spotlight not only on safety through ratio, but improved treatment of nurses that reflects the professionalism that is due those on the front lines and in direct patient care.

We have become professional "factory workers"-patients are not "widgets" and cannot be defined by a number, logorithm, or easily fit a time/treatment model as the business end of healthcare has been trying to do for years! I am sick of driving my staff like animals because that is the "directive or focus" hidden behind ideals like "patient safety"!!! Statments of doing more with less, working more efficiently blah blah blah is killing staff nurses, causing burnout, nervous conditions and early retirement.

The general public is placing their lives in the hands of task based practitioners who can't even go to the bathroom. Exhaustion=mistakes!

If California can do it, I do not understand why we aren't doing it all over.....if nurses would just join ranks it would be a forced to be reckoned with!!!!

Been gone for awhile, very disillusioned with establishment ideas and agendas.

Maisy

[Chico David, BSN, RN]

Maisy: Don't get down or discouraged. There is a lot of good stuff happening in the world of nursing - even though it is still spotty and there are many parts of the country it has not yet reached.

In the last couple of years we have seen:

• The creation of National Nurses United - somewhere around 170,000 nurses all in staff-nurse run organizations committed to real change in nursing and in health care.
  
• Large scale organizing successes by NNU and some of its member organizations, including a bunch of wins in places like Texas and Florida where people said it could not be done.
  
• The recent win of a staff nurse slate in the New York Nurses Association board elections.
  
• Now the largest nurses strike in the history of the country
  

Indeed there is a lot of awful still out there, especially for nurses in the southern states and the mountain west. But change is coming.

However: Don't look to organizations like the ANA to lead change. I don't know ENA, but the ANA is dominated by managers and academics - the kind of people who think the future of nursing lies in making the masters degree mandatory and getting nurses away from the patient and behind a computer more of the time.

Real power for nurses will come from nurses banding together, standing together and doing what we need to do to demand power, not beg for it.