Scab nursing?

[Emergent]

What do you think of crossing a picket line as an agency nurse? The facility would be suffering financially by paying an arm and a leg for staff, instead of negotiating a compromise. Are the nurses who do this traitors to their colleagues, or are they merely profiting from the facility's stubbornness and contributing to their capitulation?

I can see both sides. Ultimately, the facility can't keep paying the exorbitant rates they do to bring in outside staff, so it seems like it could be okay. What say you all?

[Floor_Nurse]

I've seen unions come in really make a mess of things. They say they have employees in their best interest (including fighting for better pay). We nurses believe that the patient's health, safety, and well-being is more important than the politics of a health care facility. Unions can really bully people, whether it's our bosses or us. Just my opinion...

[Wilhelmainah, ADN, BSN]

So I am a nurse from the Northeast and have been apart of unions before and I have also worked in the Northeast and elsewhere as a traveler at nonunion hospitals. Recently I was hard up for money because I was in between contracts and the Washington Strike came up so I decided to work it. I feel like as a nurse who has been on all sides, I have a unique perspective. It brought a mix of emotions because I had always felt like a nurse who worked a strike was a scab. But some things I found out during the strike honestly made me feel like if I were in a union again and the hospital I worked at striked, I would cross the picket line for the sake of the patients safety. First thing I found out that recently in California during a strike, there was not enough scabs and nurses at the hospital were actually subpoenaed to come in to work. YOU CANNOT STRIKE WITHOUT SCABS. I thought this was not true and that the old story of management will agree with the union if they cannot get scabs to work, no THEY WILL SUBPOENA YOU TO COME IN or you can face patient abandonment charges. Wow that definitely made me think of things differently. Secondly during the strike, it was complete chaos and I do not feel the environment was safe. To the comment that said staff swat nurses and specialty nurses came in...no, they didnt. At the hospital I was at, THERE WERE NO STAFF NURSES OR STAFF SWAT nurses. Very unsafe and I would never want a family member of mine in a hospital during a strike. I do not think it is fair to hate on scab nurses, they are not apart of your union and they are not against you. I think healthcare in general needs a lot of work and strikes are very unfortunate for patient care. Scabs are paid for with strike insurance and taxpayer money. The idea that management is financially hurt isn't so because of the scabs per se but there is evidence that shows they loose money from loss of procedures, census and from the community viewing them negatively and not using them for their elective procedures/surgeries any longer. I'm not rooting for management and I think it is sick that these multi-billion dollar corporations are running healthcare. Healthcare should be actually non profit. One last bit in response to a post about how nurses are viewed negatively during the strike, as for the Washington strike this was not true there was a HUGE community outpouring of support all the way up to the Elizabeth Warren, county and state officials. Now lets stop hating on each other and work on passing legislation for all nurses to have safe staffing levels and adequate pay.

[HiddencatBSN, BSN]

On 1/22/2020 at 3:03 PM, HappyCCRN1 said:

Without “scab” nurses, what would happen? Hospitals lose their negotiating power with the nursing unions. Unions could then become overly demanding and have the upper hand in every negotiating situation. Not saying that it’s not a bad thing (for nurses, anyway), but potential is there for it to snowball and become abused. Seems like scabs offer somewhat of a balance.

I mean....this is the point of unions, that when workers band together we have a lot more power than we do as individuals. Unions are The Balance between the workforce and the company.

Hospitals (and other companies) employ a ton of underhanded union-busting and strike-breaking tactics not to mention the efforts they expend negotiating against routine contract negotiations. Striking is the one big trump card workers have, and it’s not without its costs to the workers, not to mention organizing one is a huge undertaking, and they aren’t just happening willy nilly without a serious issue at heart.

The labor movement is on a 30 year decline with Jorifice further weakening it- and we’ve seen falling standards of living and stagnating wages and reduced worker protections across the board to go along with that. This is a “balance” that is very much tipped in favor of management.

[Grande_latte04]

This is capitalism. The big hospitals that legit take in 100s of millions to billions of dollars a year will not budge for nurse Sally to make an extra 2.25 an hour. Strikes will happen, and they are better than socialized medicine. 

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

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On 1/20/2020 at 5:49 PM, Emergent said:

... Are the nurses who do this traitors to their colleagues, or are they merely profiting from the facility's stubbornness and contributing to their capitulation?

I can see both sides. ...

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On 1/20/2020 at 6:05 PM, chare said:

And what about the patients?

I am fortunate to have been an active member of our CNA union for 23 years and never on strike. We took strike votes and informational picketing that convinced management to return to the bargaining table. 

I have supported fellow nurses when they had to strike. During a strike RN "Picket Captains" sent their cell numbers to nursing management. If patient care was jeopardized any management nurse could call a picket captain and explain the situation. Once a replacement nurse didn't know how to use dialysis equipment used by that facility. The RN Picket Captain sent a dialysis nurse from the picket line to care for the patient. 

At a different hospital strike an employee, who was not an RN, was asked for an adapter. That nurse was trying to fit a tube feeding into a central line. Fortunately the manager was notified, the replacement nurse was sent out of the hospital, and the picket captain sent a competent RN to finish the shift.

 I was told about a hospital that had moved all their patients to a sister facility across town the night before. A man drove up with his wife in labor. An L&D RN took them inside where she and her manager delivered a healthy baby. An ambulance then took them to the hospital across town.

• When our union struck nurses scheduled for the day are required to be there. If called in by the picket captain an RN is NOT considered as having crossed the picket line. He or she would not be considered a Scab.

PS: I think it likely that replacement nurses would not be available due to lack of beds and nurse to care for the COVID-19 surge.

[scribblz, BSN, CNA, LPN]

On 1/20/2020 at 11:15 PM, adventure_rn said:

I've wondered about this, too.

I work in the NICU, where the kids need to eat every three hours or they will literally die. Many of them are intubated/ventilated, and again, without nurses, they will literally die. That's how most ICUs function--if all of the nurses walked out, many of the patients would literally very quickly die.

I get that scab nurses who cross picket lines can undermine strikes. However, do we need patient harm to occur in order to prove our value when it comes to patient outcomes? It's not not like a strike is going to be solved in a day, and it's not like all of those patients can be picked up and moved somewhere else.

I figure that scab nurses are still being paid exorbitantly high fees that will put the squeeze on hospital admin. Strikes and collective bargaining all comes down to money, and scabs still create a financial burden for hospitals (hence incentivizing them to come to an agreement).

I completely agree the point of the Union/ strike is to put pressure on management to exceed to nursing requests to improve care and quality to patients and make sure that nurses are being given the support they need to succeed in that hospital. The strike is a last resort when all other negotiations have failed.

My 2 cents are:

No one wants to strike. It's lousy for all involved. I absolutely do not want harm to come to my patients while we're striking. I'm grateful there is a (too expensive to sustain/temporary) workforce that will care for our patients while we strike. In the long run it's a necessary push and pull to improve standards of care in an industry that is increasingly for profit.