Nurses’ strike passes 6 months
Nurses striking at Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester have been on the picket line for six months despite a recent negotiation that came “inches” from a deal, and now unemployment benefits for the nurses have dried up.
“It’s time to end the fight, it’s time to bring us back to work in our positions,” said Marlena Pellegrino, a Saint Vincent Hospital nurse and co-chair of the local bargaining unit of the Massachusetts Nurses Association.
Pellegrino said an Aug. 16 negotiating session with Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare nearly ended in a deal. “We were inches away from a tentative agreement.”
The parties had agreed on staffing measures, but Tenet rejected the union’s returnto-work agreement that placed all the striking nurses back in their former positions, according to Pellegrino. She said Tenet would have displaced the nurses to other areas of the hospital, which she called a “form of revenge.”
There are also nine charges of unfair labor practices filed with the National Labor Relations Board against Tenet that have yet to be resolved, according to MNA.
Those two issues are the only things standing in the way of the strike coming to an end, Pellegrino told the Herald.
“We are not going back into that building with these unfair labor practices we have filed,” Pellegrino said.
The strike is the longest nurses’ strike in state history.
The nurses had been receiving unemployment benefits throughout the strike, Pellegrino said, but they ended on Sept. 4.
Federal unemployment benefits were set to expire on Sept. 4 anyway, which the nurses anticipated. However, the nurses’ benefits have also been suspended as the state Department of Unemployment Assistance reviews a request from the hospital about recent reductions in services, as reported by the Telegram & Gazette.
Pellegrino explained that nurses have been able to collect unemployment so long as the hospital is open and providing services. But the hospital cut back on some services and beds at the beginning of August, prompting the DUA review.
Pellegrino said the move was “just another wrench to throw into the mix to scare nurses and coerce them to get them to cross the picket line.”
Many of the nurses have been working per diem jobs throughout the course of the strike to supplement their income, Pellegrino said.
The strike started when patient care concerns were continuously raised by nurses. They claimed there was a lack of proper PPE and inadequate staffing conditions that led to unsafe conditions for patients and staff, among other issues.
The strike officially began on March 8 with 700 nurses joining the picket line, according to the MNA. Several local officials have supported the nurses, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, Attorney General Maura Healey and Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty.
The hospital did not respond to the Herald’s request for comment.