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St. Vincents's Strike
Mediator Schedules Talks Between St. Vincent's
Hospital Nurses and Tenet Health Care - Thursday, May 4 at 10 a.m.
(Location To Be Determined)
WORCESTER, Mass.—The
Federal Mediator for the contract dispute between Tenet Health Care
and the registered nurses represented by the Massachusetts Nurses
Association (MNA) at St. Vincent's Hospital/Worcester Medical Center
has scheduled a meeting of the two parties for Thursday, May 4,
2000 at 10 a.m. The location of the talks has yet to be determined.
This will be the first time the two parties have met since talks
broke down on April 21, 2000. At the time of the May 4th session,
the nurses will have been on strike for 35 days.
"We look forward to the opportunity to get back
to the table," said Sandy Ellis, a nurse at the facility and a spokesperson
for the nurses' bargaining unit. "Any time the two sides get
together is an opportunity to reach a settlement and end this strike."
The issue of mandatory overtime is the single most
important issue of concern to the nurses. Currently, the hospital
does not use mandatory overtime. Under the new contract, the
hospital is demanding the right to mandate double shifts for nurses,
forcing nurses against their will to work up to 16 hours straight,
something nurses believe is dangerous to patient care.
After a 20-minute negotiating session on April 21,
talks between the St. Vincent's Hospital nurses and Tenet Health
Care broke down after the hospital refused to withdraw its demand
for mandatory 16-hour shifts as a means of staffing the hospital
in non-emergent situations.
The nurses have made a significant concession to
resolve the dispute by agreeing to work up to four hours of mandatory
overtime. The nurses' proposal would allow management to mandate
a nurse to work two hours of overtime. plus two additional hours
at the nurses' discretion. Additionally, a nurse would have
the right to refuse mandatory overtime if and when she feels too
fatigued or impaired to provide safe patient care.
The proposal to place limits on mandatory overtime
mirrors a number of contract agreements MNA-represented nurses have
negotiated at facilities where poor staffing conditions exist and
mandatory overtime is used to compensate for lack of adequate staffing.
The proposal also responds to CEO Bob Maher's public statements
that, in most cases, nurses would not be expected to work more than
two to three hours of mandatory overtime.
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