A nurses strike scheduled to begin on Christmas Eve threatens operations at three Southern California hospitals as the nurses allege that current work conditions harm staff safety amid the pandemic.
The Hospital Corporation of America on Monday received a 10-day notice of the intent to strike by about 2,450 registered nurses and licensed professionals across three of its hospitals, according to the SEIU Local 121 union chapter, which represents them. The strike would begin on Dec. 24 and continue through Jan. 3 at the Riverside Community Hospital, Los Robles Regional Medical Center, and West Hills Hospital & Medical Center.
The call to picket follows frustration in contract negotiations for four different bargaining units over workplace safety and staffing, said Terry Carter, spokesperson for SEIU Local 121.
Members of the bargaining committees have felt Hospital Corporation of America management were unwilling to offer substantive counters to their “comprehensive” proposals,” Carter said.
“Management just keeps coming back with weak, unenforceable, and vague lip service,” Carter said.
Nov. 28, 202004:42
Registered nurses have taken issue with “dangerously low staffing levels” and lack of adequate personal protective equipment that have put them at risk for infection as the coronavirus pandemic continues to overwhelm frontline workers, according to the union.
While many of these issues have pre-dated the pandemic, Carter said Monday that the issues have only gotten worse as many nurses are overworked and pushed to buy their own PPE due to hospital rationing.
“Right now when the hospitals should have been pouring resources into the hospitals, it feels like they’ve used the pandemic as an excuse to cut back,” Carter said.
Other areas of concern listed by the nurses and licensed professionals covered by the union include a lack of testing for staff, long wait times for Covid-19 patients to see nurses, and the amount of staff falling ill to the virus as a result of hospital conditions, according to a press release issued by the union Monday.
Erin McIntosh, a rapid response nurse and bargaining team member at Riverside Community Hospital, characterized the conditions as “chaos manufactured by the hospital’s unwillingness” to listen.
“We decided going into our contract negotiations with HCA that our line in the sand is getting strong pandemic safety guarantees,” McIntosh said in the press release. “Union nurses like me have led on health and safety for decades—AIDS treatment, needle safety, aerosol-transmissible disease standards, safe patient handling. This pandemic is no different.”
The Hospital Corporation of America issued a statement saying that it has bargained in “good faith” to secure a new labor agreement and that the union’s push to have nurses “abandon the beside” was “unconscionable.”
“As a result of the union’s decision to strike during this challenging time, our hospitals must limit their full scope of services in order to ensure nurses are available to care for patients with the highest needs,” the statement said.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has tied regional lockdown orders to intensive-care unit availability, ordering regions to shut down non-essential operations for a minimum of three weeks once availability falls under 15 percent.
Southern California entered a modified lockdown last week until at least Dec. 28. An update from the state’s public health department had Southern California’s ICU capacity at 4.2 percent Sunday.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
