1,000 RNs picket Brigham & Women’s Hospital

Nurses protest hospital’s failure to recruit and retain staff to provide safe care

	BWH chairperson Barbara Norton (center) addresses the winding picket line of 1,000 nurses and supporters.

In what by all accounts was the largest informational picket of a hospital in Massachusetts history, more than 1,000 registered nurses represented by the MNA at Brigham & Women’s Hospital (BWH) demonstrated outside the entrance to the facility on Oct. 12.
The RNs at BWH, who are attempting to negotiate a new union contract, walked a long and winding picket line in protest of the hospital’s failure to recruit and retain the staff needed to safely care for patients.

Maintaining appropriate staffing a struggle
Maintaining appropriate staffing levels has been a constant struggle at the facility in recent months, and it has caused nurses to either work overtime hours to fill gaps in the schedule or to take on excessive patient assignments. The nurses have pointed to concrete evidence of a rapid deterioration in staffing conditions that jeopardizes the safety of patients every day:

• In the last month, nurses have filed more than 65 official reports of unsafe staffing conditions at the facility, conditions nurses say compromised their ability to deliver the care their patients deserved. On one recent occasion, two newly licensed nurses were left alone on a floor with 15 patients—a patient assignment that the medical research shows placed those patients at a 21 to 31 percent increased risk of death.
• Nurses on a floor that specializes in providing post-operative care to critical patients recovering from brain surgery and other neurological conditions recently signed a letter to management and physicians pleading for more staff. The letter stated, “We struggle every day to keep these patients safe. We are tired of learning that our patients—no matter how hard we try—are still at risk We fear something catastrophic is going to happen.”

	Nurses cheer as the local ironworkers show their support with an enormous pro-union banner.

The Brigham nurses have been outraged by the hospital’s lack of effort to negotiate a fair settlement with the nurses in light of the fact that Brigham & Women’s Hospital is one the busiest and most profitable hospitals in the state, with state-of-the-art services catering to a patient population with complex needs and who require the most sophisticated nursing care.

Brigham & Women’s profits increased by more than 75 percent in 2005 to more than $74 million, and the facility posted another $42 million in profits through the second quarter of this year. In the wake of this success, the hospital is offering its nurses a 1.5 percent pay hike and is asking them to pay for that increase by cutting their sick time benefits.
The hospital’s most recent salary offer will leave the Brigham nurses pay scale as much as 10 percent below nurses at like-sized facilities—including Boston Medical Center and the Dana Farber Cancer Center.

The Brigham & Women’s Hospital nurses and management have been negotiating their contract since July 13. The contract expired on Sept. 30 and has been extended until the next negotiating session on Oct. 23. If talks continue to stall, the nurses are considering taking a vote to authorize a strike.