California Nurses Association: 6,000 California RNs to Hold One-Day Strike Thursday

OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Nurses are poised to hold a one-day strike at California's second largest private hospital and one of its most profitable corporate hospital chains Thursday, December 22 over patient care protections and corporate hospital demands for sweeping concessions. The nurses are members of California Nurses Association/National Nurses United.

The strike will affect 2,000 RNs at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center and Miller Children's Hospital in Long Beach, and 4,000 RNs who work at nine Bay Area facilities that are part of the Sutter corporation.

Long Beach RNs are at odds with hospital management over assuring there is safe RN-to-patient staffing at all times, and over the hospital's refusal to implement safe patient lift policies to prevent accidents to patients and injuries to nurses, despite enactment of a state law requiring such policy.

Long Beach nurses will also protest hospital demands for sweeping increases in healthcare premiums for nurses. The health care takeaway the hospital is pushing would cost RNs nearly $3,000 more out of pocket in premium costs, even though the hospital's costs for nurses' health coverage has not risen.

For the Sutter hospitals, nurses will be striking to protest some 150 demands for major contract concessions in patient protections and health coverage for the RNs and their families. Sutter this week refused to respond to an offer by the nurses to call off the strike if the corporation withdrew its concession demands.

Sutter seeks to limit the RNs' ability to effectively advocate for patients against the budget-focused priorities of Sutter managers and effectively force nurses to work when sick, dangerously exposing extremely ill patients to infection.

Additionally, Sutter RNs oppose management's bid to reduce nurses' healthcare coverage, with huge increases in nurses' out-of-pocket costs for health coverage-- all at a time when Sutter has amassed over $3.7 billion in profits since 2005, pays over $1 million to each of 20 top corporate executives, and increased their CEO Pat Fry's salary by 20% to $4.7 million last year.

The Bay Area walkout will affect Sutter hospitals in Alameda, San Mateo, Solano, and Contra Costa counties. 

"Sutter's proposal to eliminate sick leave will force nurses to come to work sick which will further jeopardize our fragile patients," said Hebron Viray, oncology RN at Sutter's Alta Bates' Summit Medical Center.

Additionally, RNs will also continue their protest against Sutter's reductions of patient services throughout Northern California. Sutter has targeted hospitals serving more low income patients, and carried out huge reductions in patient services it deems less profitable, regardless of the impact on patients, especially mental health services, women's health care, pediatric care, rehab services, and dialysis care.

At Long Beach, "our serious safety concerns have not been answered at the bargaining table and we will not be able to reach an agreement until they are addressed.  Patients are more important than the bottom line," said RN leader Margie Keenan.

SOURCE California Nurses Association

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