Mediator Schedules Talks Between St. Vincent's Hospital Nurses and Tenet Health Care. Thursday, May 4, at 10 a.m. at Manufacturing Assistance Center Building, 60 Prescott Street, Worcester
(Nurses Will be Available for Interviews at 9:30 a.m.)

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 talks will be held at the Manufacturing Assistance Center Building, 60 Prescott Street, Worcester. 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-emergency 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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