Win for city nurses
$21M payout as jobs declared ‘physically taxing’
Nurses in New York City’s public hospitals are finally getting the credit they deserve for all their hard work – and the overdue acknowledgment is going to cost City Hall almost $21 million.
The hefty federal settlement filed Wednesday will make the city shell out $20.6 million to a combined 1,665 working and retired nurses who would have been able to retire sooner and collect their pensions if their jobs were listed as “physically taxing.”
The city will pay $20.8 million overall, which includes $100,000 to four complainant nurses and $100,000 in legal fees. A judge still must approve the settlement.
The pact with the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office boils down to a simple idea: Being a nurse is tough and risky, so the same city pension rules should apply for the people who become nurses – mostly women – as for the many men in other physically demanding, dangerous city jobs like EMTs or window washers.
Payouts could be up to $99,000 for certain nurses in city Health and Hospitals-run facilities who missed out on the chance to put in for their pensions at age 50, instead of 55. As of April 2012, new hires for listed positions were given different retirement rules without the option of retirement at 50 following 25 years of work.
“I’m happy they are finally listening to us,” said Curlean Duncan-Britton, a longtime emergency room nurse at Kings County Hospital who’s now a head nurse in the hospital’s ophthalmology practice. “I personally put myself on the line.”
The 53-year-old Brooklyn woman has three decades of nursing experience — and a bad back, knees and shoulders to show for it.
One incident years ago underscored the perils tied to the pledge to help patients.
A young woman stumbled through the ER doors, so Duncan-Britton and another nurse rushed to the woman before she could fall on the floor. The woman collapsed in their arms, vomiting in Duncan-Britton’s face and hurting her colleague’s back.
Duncan-Britton said she needed preventive care medicine and the other nurse needed disability compensation.
Between all the moving patients and hauling equipment – not to mention exposure to diseases and hazardous procedures – Duncan-Britton said, “We fit the criteria all the way.”
She noted a 2004 study saying nurses lift 1.8 tons during an eight-hour shift.
Duncan-Britton said half of the people who started in the profession with her are now out because of the strain.
“The most important part was the recognition,” said retired nurse Anne Bové, who worked for 40 years at Bellevue Hospital.
Bové, 62, helped lead the effort years ago to have nursing labeled “physically taxing” in the eyes of the city Office of Labor Relations. Duncan-Britton credited Bové for being “instrumental” in the issue, saying, “We are grateful for all of her dedication.”
Bové was the original complainant to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2008 after she pressed the New York State Nurses Association to seek list inclusion as early as 2004.
The EEOC said in 2010 there was reason to think the rules connected to the decades-old list violated workplace discrimination rules. It referred the matter to the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office, which did its own probe. After years of negotiation with the city, the feds simultaneously filed their class-action case.
“It’s some level of satisfaction in terms of a goal having been reached,” Bové said, adding, “This is one small part of the picture in terms of acknowledging the equality of women.
For Bové, a state nurses association board member who now teaches at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, fighting for patients and co-workers were wrapped together.
“If you didn’t take care of the people who took care of the people, nobody’s getting taken care of,” she said.