Editor's Note: Please pardon the long delay in sending out this bulletin, the
contents of which may well be stale news to many by now. A critical juncture
in the long struggle for fundamental health care reform in Massachusetts
erupted, but the issues are sorting themselves out now. Correction: In the
last bulletin I misspelled the web address of the Massachusetts Nurses
Association. The correct address for this valuable resource, which carries
links to many other nursing and labor sites, is <http://www.massnurses.org>.
These bulletins, together with many articles of interest to health, nursing
and labor activists, are archived, with links, on a web page entitled
'Sandy's Links,' <http://users.rcn.com/wbumpus/sandy>. - Sandy Eaton, RN,
Quincy, Massachusetts

RHODE ISLAND HOSPITAL

Nurses' strike averted after hospital calls for arbitration

The hospital invokes an unusual contract provision that calls for binding
arbitration, a move that prohibits union workers from walking off the job.

by FELICE J. FREYER, Providence Journal

July 1, 2000

Averting a health-care emergency at the last minute, Rhode Island Hospital
President Joseph F. Amaral last night called for binding arbitration after
the hospital's nurses' union overwhelmingly rejected the last contract offer.

As a result, the long-feared strike by 1,700 workers at the state's largest
hospital will not occur. But it may be many months before the hospital
settles its differences with the United Nurses & Allied
Professionals.

In four meetings held throughout the afternoon and evening, union members
voted 1,226 to 76 to reject the hospital's contract offer and go on strike.
But under an unusual contract provision, the hospital had the right to call
for arbitration if faced with a strike, and the union workers would then be
prohibited from walking out.

"I am deeply saddened by this outcome," Amaral, looking grim and worn, told a
hospital news conference a half-hour after the vote was tallied. "While I
have faith in our contingency plan, I was troubled by the sound of a
helicopter leaving with one of our patients. . . . It's also obvious that a
strike leaves deep and lasting scars. Therefore, I have decided to take what
I see as the only responsible course I could take, and that is arbitration."

Amaral said he made the decision at about 8 last night.

George Vecchione, president and chief executive officer of Lifespan, the
hospital's parent company, then called Governor Almond.

"This has been a difficult situation for all parties involved," Almond said.
"I appreciate the hospital's decision to go binding arbitration. I urge both
sides to continue negotiating and resolve their differences." In a statement
released after Amaral's announcement, UNAP President Linda McDonald said: "It
is shameful that the hospital kept the entire state in suspense for the past
week -- causing enormous disruption in our health-care system -- simply so
that it could try to browbeat its employees into accepting an unacceptable
contract.

"Today's vote is a resounding vote of no confidence in the administration of
Rhode Island Hospital and Lifespan."

AFTER ANNOUNCING the tally, McDonald, surrounded by cheering union members,
called the vote "an overwhelming response to the hospital's lack of
understanding that mandatory overtime, staffing and how we take care of our
patients needs to be addressed.

"Our patients deserve better, and we will take on their fight for them."
Union members left the Teamsters Hall in East Providence, where they met to
vote, toting picket signs with their union's name and blank space left for
each member to write her own message.

McDonald said that even with arbitration, the union planned to be on the
street at 7 this morning for a rally. And she said that the strong vote would
strengthen the union's case as the effort for a resolution moves forward.
"They know our issues are real," she said.

"We are going to make sure that Rhode Island Hospital is a place where we are
proud to work," she said.

All employees are to come to work according to their schedules today, but it
will take several days for the hospital to return to full operation, Amaral
said.

Hospital and state Health Department officials had been preparing for the
strike for at least 10 days. The hospital has already reduced its patient
load by half, and hired and trained some 200 replacement nurses through a
Colorado agency. The Health Department had staff ready to monitor care at the
hospital once the strike began.

With anxiety running high, other hospitals beefed up their emergency-room
staffing to handle any overflow from Rhode Island Hospital on a four-day
holiday weekend with a high potential for accidents. In addition to the usual
Fourth of July festivities, the Tall Ships festival in Newport and the
Snickers Soccer Tournament at the University of Rhode Island are expected to
draw thousands of people to the streets.

Now, Rhode Island Hospital will gradually restore itself to its former
stature. The near-miss on the strike will be costly, though. In addition to
the lost revenue from patients turned away or transferred out, the hospital
had spent money hiring security guards and replacement nurses. And the
hospital's labor troubles are far from over. Under the arbitration process,
both sides will present their last, best offer on each contract provision,
and for each provision the arbitrator will choose one or the other. If both
agree, the two sides also have the option of returning to the bargaining
table, to reach agreements wherever they can. But there is no time limit on
this process, and Amaral has said it could take six months to several years.

Meanwhile, the hospital and union will be bound by the terms of contract that
both want to change. The union says that excessive use of a provision
allowing mandatory overtime, and wage scales below those of other hospitals
in the area, have made it difficult for the hospital to recruit adequate
personnel. The understaffing has only increased the need for mandatory
overtime, which nurses say forces them to work while dangerously exhausted.

The hospital has acknowledged that it needs to improve wages and working
conditions to attract the necessary staff at a time when nurses, respiratory
therapists and other such professionals are in short supply. But Amaral
insisted the last offer would accomplish that. Indeed, last night's vote was
a rebuff to his personal lobbying efforts. He had walked the hallways
buttonholing employees in an effort to persuade them to accept the proposal.

McDonald said that hospital management is out of touch with the reality of
their employees' work lives.

In what Amaral called a "generous" offer, the hospital late Wednesday
presented a contract package that it said had to be accepted or rejected in
its entirety. Although the package addressed key union concerns by
restricting mandatory overtime and improving wage scales, the union said it
fell far short of what was needed to improve working conditions and solve the
chronic staffing problems.

"Although this is not the outcome I had hoped for," Amaral said, "I want to
assure all employees that I remain committed to improving their work life."

The hospital's offer included restricting mandatory overtime for each
employee to no more than eight times a year, no more than twice each month,
and no more than three times in any consecutive three-month period.

But McDonald said the hospital also wanted to wipe out existing protections
against mandatory overtime. For example, she said, the hospital wants to
eliminate its obligation to call for volunteers before mandating overtime and
its obligation to mandate only for unforeseen circumstances.

Additionally, there are no restrictions on mandating overtime shifts that are
less than four hours long.

The hospital also proposed wage increases ranging from 2 percent to 13.5
percent, with the biggest increases concentrated on newly hired employees
with eight or fewer years of experience. But McDonald said that even with the
significant increases the hospital has proposed for lower-paid nurses, Rhode
Island Hospital's rates will still not be competitive with other hospitals in
the state.

And roughly half the hospital's nurses are not in the group receiving the
significant increases. Those experienced nurses, some of whom make as much as
$29 an hour, will receive a 2-percent wage increase plus a 2-percent lump-sum
payment that will not raise their base pay.

"I feel terrible for the employees," Amaral said. "I think this is a good
offer. Now we're back to ground zero." The hospital will have to retool its
final offer, changing sections as it goes along in arbitration, he said.

The hospital's decision to choose arbitration tosses out the window the
strike contingency plan hammered out between the hospital and Health
Department officials.

By late yesterday, Rhode Island Hospital had reduced its census to 203
people, less than half the 450 people typically in the hospital at this time
of year. It was preparing to move 33 children from Hasbro Children's Hospital
to the fifth floor of the main building. Hasbro Children's Hospital would
have remained closed during the strike, with pediatric intensive care
provided on the fifth floor of the main building, and emergency care through
the adult emergency department. The primary concern, at least for the busy
holiday weekend, was providing emergency services. Rhode Island Hospital
houses the region's only Level I trauma center -- capable of handling people
with multiple serious injuries and people with serious injuries who are also
critically ill. It is also the busiest emergency department in New England.

Kent County Memorial Hospital in Warwick, the state's second-largest
hospital, staffed its emergency room at the highest levels, in preparation
for an exceptionally busy weekend. Our Lady of Fatima Hospital in North
Providence, was staffed to handle about 50 percent more than its normal
volume.

Copyright © 2000 The Providence Journal Company

------------------------

Nurses protest arbitration, say ruling will prove them right

The hospital, meanwhile, continues to operate normally and expects to regain
a normal patient load in the next few days.

by RANDALL RICHARD, Providence Journal

July 2, 2000

The busiest emergency room in New England remained so yesterday as 1,700
health-care providers at Rhode Island Hospital continued to protest working
conditions but stayed on the job, their contract dispute with hospital
management headed for binding arbitration.

Instead of striking, as they had voted overwhelmingly to do on Friday, about
600 nurses, therapists and professional technologists were rallying outside
the hospital at 8 a.m. Their 1,100 colleagues in the United Nurses & Allied
Professionals were already at work or will be there in coming days.

What has kept them on the job was a last-minute decision Friday night by
hospital President Joseph F. Amaral to heed the advice of Governor Almond and
others and invoke an unusual contract provision that calls for binding
arbitration.

The decision was greeted by many of the hospital workers as a bittersweet
victory: it prohibits them from walking off the job and leaves both sides in
the dispute at the mercy of arbitrators, but
leaders of the hospital's nurses' union say they are confident that the
"final-offer" contract language demanded by hospital management will be
rejected by an arbitrator.

Hospital administrators, meanwhile, who last week had voiced skepticism about
going to binding arbitration, were crediting themselves with averting a
strike that Amaral on Friday night said would have left "deep and lasting
scars."

While it remains to be seen whether those scars can be avoided, there was
little doubt yesterday but that the wounds remain open.

Decrying the hospital's mandatory overtime policy as dangerous for staff and
patients alike, and its salary scale as one of the lowest in the state,
nurses and professional staff rallied in front of the hospital after marching
along the sidewalk on Dudley and Eddy Streets, carrying posters, balloons,
and chanting and blowing whistles.

Many wore special white T-shirts and buttons saying "Restore the Pride."
Several ambulances pulled up to the emergency room but met with no
interference as the union members picketed. As the ambulances left the
hospital, drivers honked in support.

Shortly after dawn, the emergency room at Rhode Island Hospital was quiet,
but traffic resumed its normally robust level as the day wore on. One of the
morning's first arrivals was Margaret Maymon. She was waiting there after an
ambulance rushed her 71-year-old husband, Russell, to the emergency room with
chest pains.

Maymon, who lives in Warwick, said hospital personnel took her husband right
away. "We just came in by rescue, and we had no problem. It was like a normal
working day," she said.

Maymon, a former nurse who struck for six weeks at St. Joseph's Hospital,
sympathized with the nurses. "I feel bad for them," she said. But she was
relieved not to have to take her husband elsewhere. He had just spent a week
at Rhode Island Hospital after a heart attack, and she wanted to take him
back there because the staff knew his condition.

Tabita Muntan was also glad the nurses did not strike. Her 60-year-old
mother, Marina Mandula, has been in Rhode Island Hospital since a car
accident broke her ribs, punctured her lungs and damaged her liver last
Saturday.

She said hospital personnel moved her mother Friday in anticipation of a
possible strike, and that receptionists had somehow lost track of her. "We
were a little scared," Mutan said, after hospital personnel acknowedged they
were having trouble finding her mother.

"We went floor to floor to find her," she said, and upon finding her was
pleased to discover that the care she was receiving "seems normal." Muntan,
who lives in Woonsocket, said she supports the union: "The nurses are
working. They are trying hard. I see they struggle because I see them running
from patient to patient."

THE HOSPITAL'S CHIEF spokeswoman, Jane Bruno, said last night that all
unionized workers at the hospital reported to work yesterday as scheduled and
that operations at the hospital's emergency department and at Hasbro
Children's Hospital were running at normal levels. Everyone who needed trauma
care or who needed to be admitted on an emergency basis was accommodated, she
said. She repeated Amaral's assertion that management had averted a
health-care crisis by calling for arbitration.

Bruno said that as part of its strike contingency plan, the hospital had
reduced the number of beds for elective surgery over the last several days.

As a result, she said, the patient count yesterday was down to 204, but was
expected to return to normal, about 460 patients, over the next several days.

Because the hospital invoked the contract's binding arbitration clause, Bruno
said, 200 replacement nurses contracted through a Colorado-based nursing
provider will not be needed.

Bruno also reiterated the hospital's position that it is making every effort
to reduce manadatory overtime, that it values its nurses as "a critical part
of its delivery of health care" and that "it wants a solution that will be
fair to everyone."

Among those who were voicing support for the union yesterday was Kathy Nycio,
whose 6-year-old granddaughter, Kayla, goes weekly to Hasbro to receive
treatment for leukemia. Nycio and her granddaughter said they came to the
rally to lend support.

Nycio said that when she learned of the labor dispute, "I cried. I felt bad.
I felt bad for the nurses and for what we would have to do."

"When you get used to nurses, it is hard to walk into another hospital. I
mean, they know your kids. They know you . . . To go to another hospital
where you don't know the staff and don't know the hospital and to have the
confidence is hard."

If the nurses went on strike, she said, her granddaughter would have had to
have missed a bone marrow check, used another lab for blood tests and would
have had to have taken seven pills instead of an injection for treatment.
Also, she said, Kayla's records would have been transferred.

WITHIN HOURS of reopening at 4 a.m. yesterday, the emergency room and lobby
at Hasbro Children's Hospital were quiet.

Most of the nurses who were interviewed there lambasted management's decision
to invoke binding arbitration at the last minute, but they expressed
confidence that an arbitrator will rule in their favor.

"The hospital is bargaining in poor faith. They waited to the last minute to
agree to arbitration. They did not want to negotiate with us," said Darlene
Bergin, a nurse in the pediatric intensive care unit at Hasbro.

Bergin said she feels the chances are "very good" that UNAP will win in
arbitration. She attacked the mandatory overtime that the hospital imposes
and said she has been forced to work overtime four or five times since
January.

"You're falling asleep as you're driving home. I find myself swerving to miss
the guard rail," she said. When she gets home, she said, she must take care
of her baby.

Working with sleep deprivation, she noted, is dangerous in her line of work.
"It is so easy to make a mistake."

Verna Whitamore, a nurse in the intermediate coronary care unit, was also
critical of management's bargaining, but said she was glad for patients that
hospital management decided to invoke arbitration. And, she added, "this
would not have been easy for us. We have families to support. We are glad it
ended this way."

Not everyone was pleased by the hospital's decision to invoke binding
arbitration.

One nurse, Melissa Blount, who takes care of 12- to 18-year-olds at Hasbro,
said the last-minute choice struck her as "an easy way out for them to deal
with the important aspects of the contract that they want to take away. There
is obviously a reason they did this."

As for the two main sticking points in the contract talks, Blount said, "The
pay should be the highest in the state because we deal with the sickest
patients. How do you expect to keep skilled nurses here with a pay scale that
is the lowest in the state?"

A few hospital employees who were watching the picketing declined to comment
on the record, but said they supported the nurses.

"They have legitimate gripes," one long-time employee said, watching nurses
assemble for the rally.

One employee who is not in the union -- Donna Okanlawon, a certified nursing
assistant -- said she also supported the pickets. "After eight hours," she
said, "we should be able to get out of here."

She said she was warned a few weeks ago after refusing to work a mandatory
overtime shift because she had to go home to make dinner for her 77-year-old
father.

"You don't have your own time after eight hours," she said.

Among those who were on hand early yesterday to voice support for the nurses'
union was U.S. Rep. Bob Weygand, a Democrat.

Weygand said he was taking the side of the union because nurses and
technicians "are on the front line of health care."

Nurses, he said, should not be required to work overtime or work until
they're exhaused.

What is needed, declared Weygand, are nurses who can clearly focus on the
needs of their patients, not nurses who are "tired and stressed out."

Union president Linda McDonald said nurses and technicans at the hospital
logged 51,000 hours in overtime during the first quarter of the year and were
working overtime at a pace that would exceed the 190,000 hours in overtime
they had worked last year.

She said that while she would have preferred to get a new contract at the
bargaining table rather than through arbitration, she feels "extremely
confident" the union will fare well in the arbitration process.

That was one reason that Lifespan -- which runs the hospital -- initially did
not want to go to binding arbitration, she said.

Hospital administrators, she said, had waited until the last minute to invoke
the arbitration clause because they had been working to lobby the nurses to
their side. It was a hope, she said, that was clearly crushed when the union
rejected the hospital's final contract offer by a vote of 1226 to 76 on
Friday.

Rather than negotiate in good faith, McDonald said, the hospital choose to
beef up security and to bring in strikebreaking nurses from Colorado. "They
do everything to spend money," she said, "except at the bedside."

Copyright © 2000 The Providence Journal Company

----------------------------------------

R.I. Hospital, nurses say they're willing to negotiate

The hospital last week had invoked a binding-arbitration clause in its
contract with the nurses' union, which was on the verge of striking.

by JONATHAN D. ROCKOFF, Providence Journal

July 7, 2000

Although previous talks failed, Rhode Island Hospital and its nurses' union
this week indicated a willingness to return to negotiations while they
prepare for binding arbitration.

The nurses' union always favored negotiations, union director Rick Brooks
said. "We still believe that the best way to address the issues is through
negotiation. That continues to be our preference," he said.

Hospital management would discuss its last offer, spokeswoman Linda Shelton
said. "We put our best offer on the table, and we would be willing to sit
down and answer any questions," she said.

The 1,700 members of the United Nurses & Allied Professionals almost went on
strike at Rhode Island Hospital, the state's largest, after negotiations
failed to resolve differences over salaries and mandatory overtime.

At the eleventh hour last Friday, however, Rhode Island Hospital President
Joseph F. Amaral averted a planned strike by referring the contract dispute
to binding arbitration, triggering a process that could take months.

During arbitration, each side presents its last, best offer on every contract
issue. They can amend their offer until the close of hearings. The
arbitrators then decide to award one position or another.

For that reason and the time involved, opposing sides often negotiate a
settlement before the hearings, said Joseph J. Rodio, a labor lawyer who has
helped Providence police and fire unions reach such agreements before
arbitrations.

For decades under state law, police and fire unions have had to resolve
intractable contract disputes through binding arbitration. Their contracts
give unions the option to arbitrate so they cannot strike. More recently, the
provisions have spread to the private realm. Rodio said the building trades
have placed clauses for binding arbitrations in their contracts. But, Rodio
said, "It is rarely, rarely invoked."

In interviews this week, both sides in the hospital dispute said they were
preparing for arbitration. First, they must appoint the three-member panel
that will hear their dispute and then rule on each issue under contention.

It will take at least a month for hearings to begin. After the hearings end,
the arbitrators have another month to issue their rulings.

"This is like watching paint dry," Rhode Island Hospital's Shelton said.

The sides are also considering which issues to present. For the union, Brooks
said, the issues are more than increasing salaries so they are competitive
with other area hospitals and reducing mandatory overtime. The union wants
guarantees that nurses will not lose their jobs, lose hours or get
transferred if a planned merger with Care New England takes effect. And it
wants more say in scheduling nurses and setting staffing levels.

Brooks said the union wants to resolve the dispute as quickly as possible, so
it will try to expedite arbitration proceedings and is willing to settle
differences through negotiations.

Explaining the union's preference for negotiations, Brooks called arbitration
a "calculated risk."

"It is not rolling the dice," he said. But "most people prefer to shape their
own agreement if they can."

The hospital, Shelton said, also wants to alter the scheduling process to
make it easier for administrators to fill vacancies without calling nurses
according to seniority.

The hospital also wants to establish a flexible nurse's position, basically a
part-time nurse whom hospital administrators can call on during staffing
shortages to work in any unit, Shelton said.

And Shelton said the hospital wants to encourage nurses to volunteer for
overtime by paying them twice their hourly wage, rather than 11/2 times their
hourly wage if they are required to work overtime.

Rhode Island Hospital included a binding-arbitration clause in their most
recent contract with the nurses' union, Brooks said. In exchange, the
hospital agreed to give unions the same expiration date for all their
contracts.

Hospital management's decision to invoke the clause is unusual in the state,
said Karen L. Davidson, chairwoman of the Rhode Island Bar Association's Alter
nate Dispute Resolution Committee.

Davidson criticized management for choosing arbitration at the last minute,
saying it was costly for the hospital to hire substitute nurses and it hurt
other area hospitals that had to gear up for a strike.

But she said the decision also helps management. "What they've done is taken
the steam out," Davidson said. "The union was rolling along and gaining
momentum and bringing this to a head."

Long and drawn-out, arbitrations do not generate the publicity that strikes
do, Davidson said. "It will be broken up. It will not be like the Claus von
Bulow trial -- day by day," she said.

But the nurses' union will try to keep public attention focused on the
contract dispute. "We're going to continue to publicize the instances of
mandatory overtime and the abuse of this," Brooks vowed.

Copyright © 2000 The Providence Journal Company

-----------------------------------

RHODE ISLAND REHAB

Rehab hospital union may begin strike countdown next week

July 1, 2000

NORTH SMITHFIELD -- Union leaders for the nursing and therapy staff at
Rehabilitation Hospital of Rhode Island said they will begin their 10-day
strike warning late next week unless progress is made at a negotiation
session planned for Friday.

The 10-day strike warning was approved by the membership of the Northern
Rhode Island United Nurses & Allied Professionals, Local 5067, on Tuesday by
a 58-to-3 vote. The union represents 90 licensed nurses and therapy staff
members at Rehabilitation Hospital of Rhode Island, which is owned by
Landmark Medical Center.

Union representative Christopher Callaci said the leadership could begin the
10-day strike countdown as soon as Friday.

"At the moment we are sitting on it but we may issue it as early as next
week," he said.

The union also approved a 10-day notice to begin informational picketing,
which they will probably begin a day or two before Friday's meeting.

"At that point we will bargain with the hospital in good faith. They will
bring to us their final offer and [union members] can accept that or go on
strike," he said.

The nurse's three-year contract at RHRI, an 82-bed hospital in North
Smithfield, expired yesterday. The hospital currently has 50 patients,
according to hospital officials.

Copyright © 2000 The Providence Journal Company

-------------------------------------------

UPDATE

July 2, 2000

Union leaders for the nursing and therapy staff at Rehabilitation Hospital of
Rhode Island and officials at Landmark Medical Center, the hospital's owner,
have agreed to meet tomorrow, four days earlier than planned, in an effort to
resolve their contract dispute.

The meeting had been scheduled for this Friday, but will be held instead at 9
a.m. tomorrow at the Pawtucket office of U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, who
urged the earlier date.

Last week the union, representing 90 licensed nurses and therapy staff
members at the 82-bed facility in North Smithfield, voted to give the
hospital 10-day notice of a possible strike late next week, unless contract
talks progressed in the meantime. A second vote would have to be taken before
the union could call a strike.

The nurses' and therapists' three-year contract at RHRI expired Thursday.

Copyright © 2000 The Providence Journal Company

-----------------------------

Rehab hospital, union make progress

The nurses union at the Rehabilitation Hospital of Rhode Island agrees to
wait to issue its 10-day picket warning at the request of U.S. Rep. Patrick
J. Kennedy.

by MATT McKINNEY, Providence Journal

July 4, 2000

PAWTUCKET -- A labor dispute between the Rehabilitation Hospital of Rhode
Island and some 90 unionized nurses who work there was eased slightly
yesterday as both sides met with U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy. The
congressman invited both sides to meet at his Pawtucket office to avert what
he said could be a "disruptive strike that would cost everybody."

The dispute has focused on pay, health-care coverage, retirement benefits and
the hospital's requirement that nurses occasionally work "mandatory overtime"
shifts to staff the hospital.

Union members have already granted their leadership the authority to issue a
10-day strike warning and a 10-day informational picketing warning.

Though neither warning has been issued yet, the union had planned to begin
the 10-day picket warning this week in preparation for a negotiation session
scheduled for Friday.

At Kennedy's request, the union has agreed to wait, said Vivian Fike,
president of Local 5067 of the Northern Rhode Island United Nurses & Allied
Professionals.

"We will see what happens with negotiations and, if we have to, we will give
[the informational picketing warning] next week," she said. The union had
said previously that it would issue its 10-day strike warning next week if
Friday's negotiations fail. Those plans are also on hold, Fike said.

The two sides met for 11 hours on Sunday after the hospital called an
emergency negotiation session to prepare for the meeting with Kennedy. In a
few key areas of the negotiations, the hospital and nurses came closer to
agreement.

The hospital management has agreed to replace the health-care coverage
offered to the unionized nurses with a Blue Cross plan. The union had
complained that the health-care plan offered to its members, Health Care
Value Management of Worcester, in Massachusetts, wasn't certified with
the Rhode Island Department of Health.

The hospital also scaled back its maximum limit on mandatory overtime for
nurses, from 16 times per year to 12 times per year. The union has asked for
a maximum of eight mandatory overtime shifts per year. But significant
hurdles remain in the labor talks over wages and retirement benefits. The
hospital plans to halt its contribution of 2 percent of gross salary to the
nurses' 401k plans. Those plans have not changed, according to Fike.

For wages, the hospital has offered a 4-percent increase; the union has asked
for 5 percent.

Kennedy said he was optimistic that a strike could be averted. "I got a very
good assurance from both sides that they would continue to work on this issue
and try to resolve it."

The nurse's three-year contract at RHRI, an 82-bed hospital in North
Smithfield, expired last week. The hospital currently has about 50 patients.

Copyright © 2000 The Providence Journal Company

---------------------------------------------------

CALIFORNIA

Hospital Walkout

S.F. Medical Workers Stage One-Day Strike

ABC-News

July 6 - Almost 4,000 hospital workers at 10 San Francisco Bay Area medical
facilities walked off the job today, saying the one-day strike was necessary
because mandatory overtime requirements are compromising patient care.
"It's about patient care . about not having tired nurses taking care
of the community," DeAnne Horne said in a telephone interview as strikers
chanted in the background.
Horne, a striking care associate in the family care center at Alta Bay
(sic) hospital in Berkeley, said that although in principle she worked a
32-hour week, she'd just worked nine days in a row.
The union says it wants an end to mandatory overtime, and an increased
voice in staffing decisions. It also wants the ability to negotiate single
contracts for workers at different facilities, instead of being forced to
negotiate separate contracts for each hospital. Hospital officials say that
the union is simply looking to expand its power and obtain guaranteed
lifetime jobs for its workers.
Those striking include receptionists, food service workers, nursing
assistants and respiratory therapists at 10 northern California hospitals.
Bill Gleeson, a spokesman for five Sutter Health hospitals affected by
the Service Employees International Union strike said the facilities remained
open today.
"But it is not business as usual," he stressed, saying that some of
the hospitals had curtailed elective surgeries, while others had transferred
patients to unaffected facilities. "We're just hoping there isn't a public
health emergency," he said.

A 'Rogue' Union?

In a strident tone that characterized those on both sides of the picket line,
Gleeson accused the strikers of being a "rogue union that has abandoned
thousands of patients for a picnic and a parade in San Francisco."
Each side has accused the other of negotiating in bad faith, and
Sutter Heath says it has filed an unfair labor practice motion with the
National Labor Relations Board. Both sides have taken out radio and print ads
appealing for public support.
Union spokeswoman Christie Hawkins said the strikers want the
hospitals to hire enough workers to avoid mandatory overtime, and that
although money wasn't the strikers' primary motivation, "certainly the way
you attract and retain the people you need is offering competitive salary and
benefits."
The union claims its members' salaries are significantly lower than
those of workers at other hospitals in the area.
Horne said salary issues were largely resolved between management and
the union, and that S.E.I.U. was close to accepting an offer of 4 percent
each year for two years, and a 3 percent raise the following year.
Local 250 represents 50,000 health-care workers in all aspects of the
health-care industry, Hawkins said.
The strike affects five Sutter Health hospitals, three Catholic
Healthcare West hospitals and two independent facilities.

Or a Stand for Quality Care?

At Summit Medical Center in Oakland, an estimated 760 health-care workers
walked off their jobs, the union said. About 200 picketers walked the blocks
outside the hospital early today, carrying signs that read "Sutter: Profits
before People" and shouting "We are health-care workers fighting back." "This
is an historic day for consumers because this union has drawn the line. We're
going to force corporate health care to put decisions back in the hands of
nurses, doctors and other health-care workers," said union president Sal
Roselli.
"We're taking a stand for quality patient care in our community," said
Beverly Griffith, a linen distributor at Summit Medical Center in Oakland.
A number of nurses were striking in sympathy as well. "I'm here
because any time my co-workers are fighting for an issue important to them
I'll support their strike," said neonatal nurse Thorild Urdal. She added that
she was not worried about a lapse in patient care because Summit was given a
10-day notice about the strike and they transferred some patients to other
hospitals.
Unlike most strikes, this one is not the result of a breakdown in
contract talks. Negotiations over various contract issues continue at each
hospital. Federal mediators met last week with Sutter Health officials, and
on Monday with representatives of Catholic Healthcare West.
The walkout comes as 1,730 nurses at two Stanford hospitals are in
their fourth week of a strike. The service union said its one-day strike was
not timed to coincide with the nurses' walkout.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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