Mercy Hospital Nurses Secure Improved Staffing and Conditions
Workers
at Mercy Hospital in Buffalo, New York were on strike 35 days, starting
October 1, demanding safe staffing and working conditions and increased
wages. They joined several hundred nurses in Worcester, Massachusetts,
who have been on strike at St. Vincent Hospital since March 8 and over
900 maintenance and service workers at Cabell Huntington Hospital in
West Virginia who struck on November 3. Like many health care workers,
all have been forced to work in unsafe conditions, especially where
staffing is concerned. As nurses across the country are bringing out,
there is not a shortage of nurses but a shortage of safe working
conditions. The difficult work they do has become more so during the
pandemic. Many across the country still contend with a lack of
protective gear, testing, paid sick days for quarantining and more.
The
strike at Mercy Hospital involved about 2,500 nurses and clerical,
service and technical staff, and the demand for a staffing ratio of one
nurse per four patients in the medical-surgical areas, the minimum
needed. As well, many of the staff had poverty level wages, including
environmental service workers and dietary aides, who made as little as
$13.45 an hour. These workers contend directly with COVID-19 yet are
making less than those at McDonald's and similar fast food locations.
The striking workers at Mercy Hospital are all members of the
Communications Workers of America (CWA) Locals 1133 and 1168. The
workforce, largely women, joined in staffing the picket lines and
received the support of patients and community members who appreciate
their tremendous efforts to provide care and demand patient safety.
While Catholic Health had been claiming it cannot afford increased
wages, they were paying scabs $150 an hour to fill nursing positions,
more than triple current wages of the strikers, and spending tens of
millions of dollars to keep the hospital open. On November 1, Catholic
Health also stopped paying health care benefits as a means of
blackmailing nurses and staff back to work.
A tentative agreement affecting Mercy Hospital and other Catholic
Health Hospitals was reached November 4 and was overwhelmingly ratified
at meetings November 6-7. According to CWA it provides for guaranteed
staffing ratios that will mean Mercy has to hire about 400 people.
"Thanks to the steadfast determination and sacrifices of our members
over the past five weeks, these Catholic Health hospitals are now the
first in New York, and some of the only across the country that will
guarantee safe staffing levels," said CWA Area Director Debora Hayes.
Cabell Huntington Hospital
The striking health care workers at Cabell Huntington Hospital are
members of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) District 1199.
The licensed practical nurses, lab
technicians, maintenance and cleaning staff rejected a proposed
contract that drastically hikes private health insurance premiums and
lowers take-home pay. Needless to say, the workers have been under
tremendous stress during the pandemic health emergency with West
Virginia recently suffering a particularly severe outbreak of the Delta
COVID-19 outbreak.
St. Vincent Hospital
The strike at St. Vincent Hospital continues. The corporate
owner of the hospital, Tenet Health announced $448 million in profits
for the third quarter, which are said to be in part driven by increased
emergency room admissions and surgical procedures.
Kaiser Permanente
Striking facility and biomedical engineers at the Vallejo facilities
of Kaiser Permanente will be joined on the picket line across northern
California on November 19 by 2,000 mental health clinicians,
psychologists, therapists and social workers. The workers report they
will stand with their already striking coworkers and demand "Kaiser
bargain in good faith to fix its broken mental health care system that
leaves patients waiting up to three months for therapy appointments and
therapists overwhelmed with crushing caseloads."
Pickets will be set up outside Kaiser Hospitals in Vallejo, San
Francisco, Sacramento, Fresno, Santa Rosa, Oakland and San Jose
starting 6 am on November 19. The mass action is in solidarity with
members of the Stationary Engineers Local 39, who have been striking
Kaiser Facilities in Northern California since September 18.
"Every time we've gone on strike to demand better care for our
patients, the engineers have joined us on the picket line," said Willow
Thorsen, a Kaiser social worker in Santa Rosa in a news release. "We're
striking now to stand up for our colleagues and our patients, who are
being denied the care they need."
Kaiser mental health clinicians, represented by the National Union
of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), have been without a contract since
October 1. The Kaiser giant has rejected union proposals to increase
staffing, recruit more bilingual and minority therapists and ease
unsustainable caseloads that are causing increased turnover at Kaiser
Clinics.
"Kaiser is in denial about how much its patients are suffering
trying to access mental health care," said Kenneth Rogers, a Kaiser
psychologist in Sacramento. "There's no clinical standard that calls
for making patients wait a month or more between appointments, and
therapists are leaving because we can't provide ethical care."
To increase pressure on Kaiser to reach a settlement that meets
their rights and claims, the NUHW has issued another strike notice
affecting Kaiser Outpatient pharmacies to last from November 15 through
November 22.
A union survey of Kaiser mental health clinicians released earlier this year found that:
"80 per cent reported that their clinics are too understaffed to provide appropriate and timely care to patients.
"65 per cent reported that every day they must schedule return
appointments further into the future than is clinically appropriate for
their patients.
"87 per cent reported that weekly individual psychotherapy appointments are unavailable for patients who need it.
"55 per cent reported that during the past six months they've considered leaving Kaiser."
Sal Rosselli, President of the National Union of Healthcare Workers,
which represents Kaiser mental health clinicians in California and
Hawaii said, "Kaiser's refusal to even consider proposals to boost
staffing and improve care shows that it's not serious about working
with clinicians to fix its mental health care system."
Kaiser Permanente operates 39 hospitals and more than 700 medical
offices, with over 300,000 personnel, including more than 80,000
physicians and nurses. According to the NUHW, the most recent annual
financial accounts from Kaiser report a $13.8 billion profit and liquid
cash reserves totalling $44 billion.
32,000 California Health Care Workers Planned Strike Averted
Unions
representing thousands of Kaiser Permanente workers, who had planned to
strike November 15, announced on November 13 that a tentative agreement
had been reached. The United Nurses Associations of California/Union of
Health Care Professionals had planned to strike over Kaiser's demands
to further "depress wages for current employees and slash wages for
incoming workers during a national health care staffing crisis," the
union said. The health care workers -- about 21,000 registered nurses,
pharmacists, midwives, physical and occupational therapists, nurse
practitioners and physician assistants -- are part of the Alliance of
Healthcare Unions, with 21 locals representing 52,000 workers.
The two-tier system Kaiser wants to create of regional wage scales
for everyone hired after 2022, meaning a giant cut in pay and benefits,
did not make it into the tentative agreement. Two-tier systems are
unusual in health care and workers recognize this as a major threat to
all, especially given Kaiser is seen as a leading force in the
industry. As one worker put it, "Two-tier finds a crack and creates a
canyon."
The proposal would also put some new hires behind current starting
rates at McDonald's or Amazon warehouses. "If given a choice between
flipping burgers or moving COVID patients to the morgue for the same
money, it's a no-brainer," said one long-time mobility technician.
Nationwide Opposition to "Home All
Alone" Care Model
In
addition, nurses statewide are organizing to block efforts by Kaiser to
put in place a "stay at home" model for health care. Spearheaded by
National Nurses United (NNU), health care workers are organizing to
prevent Kaiser, along with the Mayo Clinic and Medically Home to impose
what the nurses call "Home All Alone." As their call-out states,
"Imagine you show up acutely ill in the emergency room and the medical
staff agree you need to be hospitalized immediately -- but instead of
admitting you, you get sent home with an iPad, a monitor, and the
promise of "virtual care." No hands-on care, no 24/7 registered nurses
and other providers to watch for those slight telltale changes in your
condition, no one to hold your hand or calm your fears." It destroys
the expectation and availability of safe, professional nursing care in
a hospital setting.
This venture, already being tested in two hospitals, will allow
Kaiser to close hospital beds, outsource work, cut wages,
eliminate nurses and other staff, while still getting reimbursed by
insurers and Medicare -- all at the expense of patients and safe
patient care. The plan is dangerous and life-threatening on many levels
and shifts the burden of care onto untrained family members, most often
women already contending with childcare, elder care and more.
NNU celebrated the one-year anniversary of its National Advocacy
Network, which brings together health care workers and people from all
walks of life to join in organizing to defend the rights of health care
workers, patients and their communities.
They state: We are united with Kaiser nurses, our community allies, and patients in our demands for increased staffing and that:
- Kaiser must immediately end all "Home All Alone" contracts with groups like Medically Home.
- Kaiser must end outsourcing contracts that jeopardize patient safety and violate the nurses' contract.
- Kaiser must hire additional direct care nurses to staff according to patient acuity.
-
Nursing clinical judgment must be the cornerstone of patient care, not biased technologies and algorithms.
This article was published in
November 15, 2021 - No. 107
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2021/Articles/WO081075.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
