A strike by 4,000 Registered Nurses (RNs) at ten San Francisco Bay Area, California, Sutter facilities has concluded with nurses walking together back into work, resolved to force Sutter to deal with the very serious patient care problems endemic to the chain.
The strike was marked by an average of 95 per cent participation across units, deep community and public support, and a campaign of intimidation against RNs coordinated by the highest levels of Sutter management, said the California Nurses Association last Saturday.
Sutter RNs are calling on the hospital chain to return to negotiations and begin to work with the RNs, instead of attacking them, to resolve the serious patient care problems that are at the centre of the months long dispute.
‘Conducting this ten-day strike shows the incredible determination of nurses to stand up to corporate management on these issues,’ said Bonnie Castillo, RN, Sutter division director for the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.
‘Sutter officials tried to ignore the RNs’ laser like focus on patient safety and our main issue, which is guaranteeing that our patients will be covered during legally-guaranteed meal and rest breaks.
‘But the unity of Sutter RNs the past days sent an un-mistakable message to Sutter that the RNs will not stop fighting until their patient safety concerns are satisfied,’ Castillo said.
Through the strike, Sutter RNs also repudiated a series of retaliatory measures against nurses, including threats of loss of employment and health benefits, that led the CNA/NNOC on Thursday to file unfair labour practices with the National Labor Relations Board. The result of such harassment has been to unify the RNs.
‘I’m inspired by the courage and resolve of Sutter RNs as we once again stood up for ourselves and our patients despite an atmosphere of threats and intimidation,’ said Alta Bates Summit RN Jan Rodolfo, who is also the national CNA/NNOC Secretary.
The strike was the third walkout by Sutter RNs following earlier strikes last fall.
The key reason for the walkouts is the pattern of patient safety risks caused by Sutter’s refusal to schedule RNs to care for patients when nurses are on legally-mandated meal or rest breaks.
Such scheduling gaps leave patients unattended and at risk for life threatening events.
RNs are also protesting a pattern of unfair labour practices at a number of Sutter facilities.
Nurses are also concerned over Sutter’s practice of medical redlining by closing hospitals in medically underserved areas (St. Luke’s Hospital in San Francisco and San Leandro Hospital) and their refusal to agree to fair settlements on issues of healthcare, pensions and retiree health.
The Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco last week condemned Sutter Health for medical redlining with its attempts to close St. Luke’s Hospital, and directed the city attorney to explore legal options to keep the hospital open as a full acute-care service facility.
Sutter’s attempted closure of St Luke’s has sparked widespread opposition, including many community protests and three strikes by the registered nurses employed there.
Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi authored the legislation on medical redlining, a term referring to systemically denying medical care to underserved communities, in this case the communities of colour who rely on St. Luke’s, which is the only private hospital in the southern half of the city.
Sutter has convened a ‘Blue Ribbon Panel’ to review the future of the facility, but its intentions remain unclear.
Zenei Cortez, RN, a member of the CNA/NNOC Council of Presidents said: ‘This is an unprecedented effort between elected officials, caregivers, patients, and the community to save St Luke’s Hospital.
‘We applaud Supervisor Mirkarimi’s leadership in this effort.
‘Closing this facility, with its mission to serve the underserved, will harm San Francisco’s public health. We just can’t let that happen.’
The Mirkarimi legislation noted that Sutter is ‘abandoning services provided to uninsured people, Hispanic and African American residents, and medically underserved neighbourhoods in San Francisco and expanding hospital operations for access by insured, middle and upper-income, non-Hispanic, largely non-African American residents.’
From 2006-2007, St Luke’s treated a patient population that was 39.56 per cent Hispanic and 17.82 per cent African-American.
By contrast, Sutter’s favoured hospital north of Market served a patient population that was less than one per cent Hispanic and only 6.41 per cent African American.
l In a dramatic breakthrough for the aspirations of Texas registered nurses to have a stronger voice to speak out for patients and themselves, a northwest Houston hospital last Friday night became the first hospital in Texas to win union collective bargaining rights.
RNs at Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center Hospital voted 119 to 111 to affiliate with NNOC Texas – Texas affiliate of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.
The election was supervised by the National Labor Relations Board. NNOC Texas will represent nearly 300 RNs at the hospital.
‘Finally our voice will be heard,’ said Josie Jupio, RN. ‘This victory of the nurses’ unity will bring a change for the better, impacting patient care, improving the benefits and assuring an open door policy that is fair to all.’
‘This is indeed a victory for all patients, and all the staff providing care for them,’ said Jeanette Thornhill, RN.
NNOC/CNA Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro said the ‘stunning victory changes the face of healthcare in Texas, and will send shockwaves across the country, especially in states where no or only a few RNs are represented.
‘It sends a clarion message to those RNs, a hope that they too can overcome the odds and band together to improve the quality of care at the bedside and change forever the standards for themselves and their colleagues,’ DeMoro said.
While Cypress Fairbanks, part of the Tenet Healthcare system, is the first hospital where the RNs will be covered by a union contract, NNOC Texas has spread its roots far and wide in Texas with members and hospital committees from El Paso to Dallas to Austin to Brownsville to San Antonio.
‘Texas RNs have shown courage and determination to fight for their rights and their patients,’ said David Johnson, Director of Organizing of NNOC/CNA.
‘Their commitment helped lay the groundwork for tonight’s breakthrough victory for safe patient care and RN power in Texas, and for many more such victories to come.’
‘The intensity to which the nurses were involved on this historic achievement demonstrates that Texas will never be the same,’ DeMoro said. ‘There is something about these nurses that should give hope to patients in Texas and nurses across the nation.
‘We plan on working quickly with Tenet Healthcare, as we have in the past to achieve an agreement that works best for the patients of Texas.’
‘Union means unity for the good of all, especially our patients who are the cause we are here for,’ said Cypress Fairbanks RN Purita Reyes.
Statewide, Texas/NNOC has more than 2,000 activists who have also been busy campaigning to pass legislation to establish minimum RN-to-patient staffing ratios, based on a California law where the ratios have improved care and helped reduce the nursing shortage, and establish legal protections for RNs’ ability to advocate for patients.
NNOC Texas has held major rallies for the bill on the steps of the Capitol in Austin and outside the Alamo in San Antonio, and hosted workshops across the state.
In Houston, NNOC Texas has been a presence since 2005 when hundreds of NNOC/CNA members arrived from around the country to provide disaster relief in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Following Katrina, NNOC/CNA members formed the largest support group of RNs in the Harris County relief operation at the Astrodome.
‘The Cypress Fairbanks story was written in the Astrodome, on the steps of the Capitol, in education workshops, in gatherings of nurses at their homes and in hospital break rooms, in nurses throughout Texas meeting each other and understanding how collectively they could transform the state and themselves,’ DeMoro said.
‘Cypress Fairbanks is all of that and more,’ she said. ‘Texas RNs have crossed a historic bridge, and will never look back.’
