the union, which represents 1,500 nurses and other workers at the north philadelphia hospital, is threatening to hold a three-day strike starting oct. 2 if a new contract is not reached by the time the current agreement expires sept. 30
we have worked many hours at the bargaining table, but the hospital seems intent on ignoring the needs of patients and the dedicated staff here at temple," said maureen may, president of the nurses' union. "nobody wants a strike, but we are concerned about the future of patient care and the retention of professional staff."
union officials said the health system wants to increase employee health-care costs and forgo its promise to cover dependents' tuition at temple university. pasnap officials said staffing levels also remain a "serious concern."...
...temple said its nurses are paid "among the highest rates" in the delaware valley, making an average hourly rate of $39.80."
it proposal for the next three years is for no increase in the first year, followed by 2 percent increases in each of the following two years. for allied health professionals, the offer is no increase this year, following by 2 percent increases in the second and third years and 2.5 percent in the fourth....
Interesting...can they be sued for patient abandonment? Very tricky situation...
Not even remotely a "tricky situation". There is abundant precedent and law supporting the right of health care workers to take concerted job actions. For that matter, it's equally clear, at least in California, that leaving when your shift is done and refusing mandatory overtime is not the "patient abandonment" bugaboo that management tries to guilt nurses with.
They are striking because management didn't want them to be drug addicts? Seriously? If you want to do that sort of thing I don't care. Just don't be a health care provider. What a silly point to strike on.
That's actually one of the pretty minor issues in the strike, the bigger ones being management's demand to double the cost of health benefits to the nurses and the demand for a gag rule that would forbid nurses from speaking publicly about any unsafe conditions at the hospital, or reporting them to government agencies.
On the other hand, I, who haven't used any illegal substances in over 40 years, would never submit to a random drug test. It's a stupid, undignified, intrusive procedure and there is significant research casting doubt on its effectiveness and almost none to show it actually improves safety or reduces risk. It's been heavily promoted by companies that profit from doing the testing and employers, even though they know it's useless, do it because they think it may give them some defense in a suit if one of their workers causes harm when impaired. And before anyone says "What are you worried about if you have nothing to hide?", please send me your address so I can stop by and go through all your personal papers - after all, what are you worried about if you have nothing to hide? It's a measure of the docility and fear of American workers that pre-employment testing has been so easily accepted.
Unions have driven manufacturing from the country and if you don't think they won't do it to nursing you should rethink that. Medical vacations are the up and coming thing. People are leaving this country for nursing care and institutions are importing nurses. Nurses who want to take care of patients.
No, political policies like NAFTA drove manufacturing jobs from this country.
In 2002 I was working in a Tenet, non-union hospital. A union hospital in our county got a step pay system through bargaining instead of merit pay. Nurses with 20 and 30 years in the system got huge pay increases to bring them up to where they should have been (imagine starting as an RN for $6/ hr and then getting 3% raise every year. New grads were making more than their preceptors. It was crazy.) Well, MY HOSPITAL, my non union also readjusted its senior nurses wages and we all got raises as well. Union improvements lift all. Without them it's just a race to the bottom.
Unions have driven manufacturing from the country and if you don't think they won't do it to nursing you should rethink that. Medical vacations are the up and coming thing. People are leaving this country for nursing care and institutions are importing nurses. Nurses who want to take care of patients.
And without unions, we'd all be working for the same wages and benefits that workers get in the countries those manufacturing jobs have gone - we'd all have the same living standards as the third world. Which is precisely what the free market neo-liberal economist types would like to see happen. All capital totally mobile, all workers equally low paid, all countries with the same low standards. All jobs moved to wherever workers are desperate enough to work for the lowest rate. Now the manufacturing jobs are leaving China (the Chinese workers have gotten too middle class lately) and going to Vietnam and Kenya. For the ultra-wealthy who control all of that, there will never be a profit high enough or a wage low enough that they say "OK, this is good". They will always want more. If they push American workers' wages down to the level of the Chinese, will that be good enough to keep manufacturing jobs here? Nope, they'll insist on lowering them to the level of the Kenyans.
The graph shows the level of changes in wages vs the change in productivity since 1960. From the 1930s onward, there had been an tacit deal that workers would share in the gains when their work produced more. But beginning about 1980 - the era of "greed is good" and not coincidentally the era of Ronald Reagan - unions began to be beaten back and the graph shows what has happened since - productivity (the value of what a worker produces) has marched steadily upwards every year, while real wages have remained flat. The difference has nearly all gone to the richest 1% of the population. But that 1% will never be satisfied - they want a world in which every worker competes against every other to see who can be the lowest bidder for every job. So if competing for lowest wages with Vietnam and Kenya is the world you want, you can have it, but don't ask me to go there.
Interesting...can they be sued for patient abandonment? Very tricky situation...
Not tricky at all. Good question, though, because this issue is not well understood by many nurses.
For patient abandonment to occur, the nurse must:
a) Have first accepted the patient assignment, thus establishing a nurse-patient relationship, and then,
b) Severed that nurse-patient relationship without giving reasonable notice to the appropriate person (e.g., supervisor, patient) so that arrangements can be made for continuation of nursing care by others.
A nurse-patient relationship begins when responsibility for nursing care of a patient is accepted by the nurse. Failure to notify the employing agency that the nurse will not appear to work an assigned shift is not considered patient abandonment, nor is refusal to accept an assignment considered patient abandonment.
Once the nurse has accepted responsibility for nursing care of a patient, severing of the nurse-patient relationship without reasonable notice may lead to discipline of a nurse's license and charges of patient abandonment.
RNs must exercise critical judgement regarding their individual ability to provide safe patient care when declining or accepting requests to work overtime. A fatigued and/or sleep deprived RN may have a diminished ability to provide safe, effective patient care. Refusal to work additional hours or shifts would not be considered patient abandonment.
Specializes in Critical care, tele, Medical-Surgical.
nurses on strike concerned about patients
friday, april 2nd, 2010
on their third day of striking, temple university hospital nurses voiced concerns about the quality of care patients are getting from fill-in staff. ...
... the hospital brought in nurses recruited by a california-based company. union leaders say they've heard reports from staff not on strike that the quality of care has been compromised because the new team is inexperienced with the hospital's routines.
maureen may, president of the temple nurses assocation, spoke to reporters on the picket line. she says she wants to see the hospital downsize its patient load.
may: we will have rns available on the picket line in the event of a genuine patient emergency to assist if requested for stabilizing a patient for transfer out of temple. ...
... temple hospital's ceo sandy gomberg says the temporary staff has transitioned smoothly, and patients' safety has not been compromised.
she says the hospital's policy is only that employees not on strike can't join the nurses' picket line. at a press conference today, hospital gomberg said all services are fully functional....
... "we want the department of health to investigate," said patricia eakin, registered nurse in temple hospital's emergency room and statewide president of the pennsylvania association of staff nurses and allied professionals union, pasnap.
later, sandy gomberg, temple's chief executive officer, said that the hospital's 400 doctors and 3,000 nonstriking employees were caring for patients as always and that the union was attempting to "frighten" the public and distract the focus from the "real issues" of wages and benefits.
the union said hospital conditions posed a risk to patients, with reports of replacement nurses in some intensive-care units working 20-hour shifts, as well as delays in getting x-rays and lab reports....
... "we urge temple to transfer out all unstable patients and enable doctors to temporarily receive privileges to care for patients in other hospitals," said union president may, noting that temple registered nurses were available to help, in "a genuine patient emergency," to stabilize patients....
temple has done most of its strike hiring through healthsource global staffing, a [color=#320e00]california agency that specializes in strike forces. on materials released by the union, healthsource promised temporary workers pay of $2,862 to $10,388 a week to replace the striking nurses and other professionals. in addition, the strike workers would stay in "luxury" hotels with transportation provided to and from work.
the replacement workers must meet state certification rules. they began training on temple's computer system and procedures sunday. however, they did not enter the north [color=#320e00]philadelphia hospital, which has 450 staffed beds, until wednesday morning.
sandy gomberg, temple's chief executive officer, said care throughout the hospital would continue. she said the training the temporary workers received was similar to that given nurses hired through staffing agencies at other times.
gomberg, a nurse, said two-thirds of the replacement workers were nurses. they will work three to five 12-hour shifts a week, she said. she said that the hospital's nurse-to-patient ratio would be "whatever is safe" and that supervisors were working around the clock on all units to ease the transition for new workers.
dawn andonian, a fitzgerald mercy hospital nurse, said she was called at home friday night by a recruiter seeking nurses to start at temple on wednesday. she said she was told she would need to work a minimum of 80 hours a week and could earn $100 an hour. andonian, a union vice president, said she was "appalled" by the hours, which she considered "dangerous."...
linda aiken, director of the center for health outcomes research at the [color=#320e00]university of pennsylvania school of nursing, said research showed that nurses "can certainly move from institution to institution quite competently."
however, she said, 850 new people at once raises questions. "clearly, that would be a major upheaval in any organization of any kind," she said.
she thinks the most important questions are how nurse-to-patient ratios at temple will be affected and how many hours the replacement nurses will work. on average, each nurse in pennsylvania cares for 5.5 to 6 patients....
Gomberg, CEO of Temple said What??? "She says the hospital's policy is only that employees not on strike can't join the nurses' picket line."
How can a hospital CEO or policy tell me that I can't join in with a picket line on my own time???? That is ridiculous! Completely ridiculous! They truly must think we are their slaves.
Chico David, BSN, RN
624 Posts
Not even remotely a "tricky situation". There is abundant precedent and law supporting the right of health care workers to take concerted job actions. For that matter, it's equally clear, at least in California, that leaving when your shift is done and refusing mandatory overtime is not the "patient abandonment" bugaboo that management tries to guilt nurses with.