St. V’s nurses turn down proposal
Say offer isn’t enough to avoid possible strike
Nurses at Saint Vincent Hospital, locked in a contract battle with Dallasbased Tenet Healthcare, rejected a contract proposal that increased some staffing levels and pay, saying the offer wasn’t enough to avoid a strike planned for Monday.
“We are committed to continuing the process started tonight to reach an agreement to avert a strike,” Saint Vincent Nurse Marlena Pellegrino said late Monday night. “But this proposal fails to provide us with what we need to keep our patients safe, and if nothing changes, we will be forced to strike as our patients’ lives are on the line without the improvements we are seeking.”
The nurses are pushing for better staffing measures as they say patient care has suffered due to overstretched workers who simply don’t have enough time to dedicate the necessary attention to sick patients.
The group of 800 nurses at the Worcester hospital had issued a strike notice to management, which was followed by an invitation back to the negotiating table on Monday night.
Carolyn Jackson, Saint Vincent CEO, said in a statement that the hospital’s proposal is “an improvement of our existing, contracted staffing levels, which are already considered among the best of all Massachusetts hospitals. … In sum, it’s an outstanding offer intended to attract and retain a qualified nursing staff to serve our community.”
The offer includes wage increases, a dedicated critical care float position and improved staffing ratios, according to the hospital.
The Saint Vincent Hospital Board of Trustees on Tuesday wrote a letter urging nurses to reconsider the strike, saying, “We are troubled by the current situation between the Hospital and the Massachusetts Nurses Association that has led to the MNA calling for a strike starting March 8. Such a step seems too severe during a pandemic when we need to focus on caring for our community.”
But according to a statement from the Massachusetts Nurses Association, the proposal from Tenet had “minimal staffing changes” on two units and failed to include increases in support staff.
The nurses are currently preparing a counterproposal to present at the next negotiating session, which will happen on Wednesday morning.
In the last year, nurses have filed more than 500 unsafe staffing reports to management that included issues such as falls, delays in administering pain medication and preventable bedsores, according to MNA.
The strike headquarters across the street from the hospital is currently being prepared and will be staffed from 6:00 a.m. to midnight every day of the strike, an MNA spokesman told the Herald.