Message from MNA Director of Public Communications:

Below is a media advisory detailing the sequence of events for the
ratification vote for the St. Vincent Nurses' contract tomorrow (May
18th). The result of the vote will be announced at 4:30 p.m. on May 18, 2000
at a gathering of the nurses at the Summer Street Entrance to Worcester
Medical Center. After the announcement, the nurses will make one last lap
around the facility with their picket signs, before putting them down for the
last time and ending their strike. Those who have picketed with us in the
past who are available at that time are more than welcome to join us - this
is your victory too. And don't forget our celebration from 5 - 9 p.m. at Sh'
Booms in Worcester (tickets are available at the door).

M E D I A A D V I S O R Y

St. Vincent Hospital Nurses Strike-Related Events

Thursday, May 18, 2000, 6 a.m. - 4 p.m.: Rank and file nurses cast ballots
for ratification of contract. The St. Vincent Hospital/Worcester Medical
Center nurses, who reached a tentative agreement with Tenet Health Care on
May 11, 2000, will cast ballots for ratification of their first contract on
Thursday, May 18, 2000. The vote will be held from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the
nurses' strike headquarters at 29 Endicott Street in Worcester.

Thursday, May 18, 2000, 4:30 - 5 p.m.: Nurses will gather at the Summer
Street entrance of Worcester Medical Center to await the official
announcement of the result of the ratification vote. If it's a positive
result (which is likely), the nurses will take one last victory lap around
the facility before laying down their picket signs to officially mark the end
of the strike.

Thursday, May 18, 2000, 5 - 9 p.m.: Nurses, family members and members of the
community will hold a celebration of the nurses' victory at Sh'Booms
Nightclub, 215 Main St. in Worcester. Sh'Booms has donated their facility,
including a buffet dinner and disc jockey, for a fundraiser for the nurses'
strike fund.

For More Information - CONTACT:
David Schildmeier, (781) 249-0430 or (508) 426-1655 (pager)
Sandy Ellis, RN (508) 752-6979 or (508) 854-8638

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Directions to Sh'Booms

From the MASSACHUSETTS TURNPIKE, take I-290 E. Take the E. CENTRAL ST. exit,
exit number 16, towards DOWNTOWN WORCESTER. Turn LEFT onto E. CENTRAL
ST/EXCHANGE ST. Turn SLIGHT RIGHT onto EXCHANGE ST. Turn LEFT onto MAIN ST.
Sh'Booms is at #215.

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

Message from MNA President Karen Daley:

May 15, 2000

To the Nurses from St Vincent:

We are all so proud of you! Everyone at MNA and nurses throughout
Massachusetts and around the country celebrate your victory and honor you in
the courageous stand you took on behalf of yourselves, our profession and
your patients. I hope it signals the beginning of a groundswell of nursing
activism across this country related to critical workplace issues and safe
patient care. Thank you and congratulations.

Karen Daley, RN
MNA President

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

Message from New York Nurse Activist:

Hi Sandy,

It appears that the St. Vincent's nurses have negotiated stronger mandatory
overtime language than we 1199 New York nurses presently have in our contract
-- I sure would like to see the detailed language. Can you send it to me? We
may use it as a model in our negotiations next year -- congratulations to all
for a well-fought fight!

Marilyn Albert RN
Beth Israel Medical Center
New York City
Local 1199/SEIU

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

Response from MNA Labor Director Julie Pinkham:

Marilyn,

Sandy passed along your e-mail. We hope to ratify Thursday and will then put
the language up verbatim on our web site (www.massnurses.org)
<http://www.massnurses.org)>. We are treating it as a minimum standard and
will try to get it in our contracts throughout Massachusetts ... unless we
can do better (i.e. no mandatory OT). I apologize if I already sent this,
thought I might have inadvertently deleted the e-mail. Good luck.

Julie Pinkham, Director, Labor, MNA

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

Message from SEIU Local 285 President Celia Wcislo:

Statement on the St. Vincent's Hospital Nurses Victory

After six weeks on the picket line, the St. Vincent's nurses at the Worcester
Medical Center won a significant victory for all health care workers. We
congratulate the nurses and their union, the Massachusetts Nurses Association.

By sticking together, they won new limits on mandatory overtime and the right
to refuse specific overtime assignments.

The major strike issues -- persistent short staffing and management abuses of
overtime -- are affecting hospital workers and the quality of patient care
throughout Massachusetts.

Last November for example, nurses at Boston Medical Center who are members of
SEIU faced very similar issues. Fortunately, just hours before the strike
deadline, we were able to win significant new language on staffing which
averted a strike.

Our shared struggles show the importance of having a voice at work in health
care. Our unions give nurses the ability to speak with one voice about
management proposals that could affect the quality of care.

The St. Vincent nurses won because they built unity at work for their goals
and reached out to their patients, other hospital workers, health care
professionals, and the labor movement for support.

Their solid organizing resulted in overwhelming support from the Worcester
community and its elected officials. The combination of economic pressure and
community support turned the tide against the powerful for-profit Tenet
Health Care Corp.

Hopefully in the future, other Massachusetts hospital administrators will not
underestimate the determination of nurses and other health care workers to
fight for what is in the best interests of patient care and the community.

The example of the St. Vincent nurses will inspire health care workers for
many years to come. We look forward to working together to build on this
historic victory.

May 15, 2000

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

Message from Judy Shindul-Rothschild:

I was doing some research on the Web and came across a question on the
Lippincott website asking RNs if they would cross a picket line if there was
a strike. When I answered the responses were 60% No, 40% Yes. Please pass on
the website to as many RNs as possible and have them participate in this
poll. My hunch is this is going to be a topic for an AJN piece and these
percents are way, way off in my opinion. Thanks. Here's the site:
http://www.nursingcenter.com/ <"http://www.nursingcenter.com/>.

Fondly,
Judy

Judith Shindul-Rothschild, PhD, RN, CS
judith.shindul-rothschild@bc.edu <mailto:judith.shindul-rothschild@bc.edu>
Associate Professor
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, MA 02167
Chairperson, Psychiatric & Community Health Nursing
617-552-4270 (Office), 617-552-0745 (FAX)

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

Update on Nyack, New York, Strike:

Nyack Strike: Day 149
Nyack Negotiations to Resume Today

NYSNA received word yesterday afternoon that the hospital's negotiators are
willing to talk again about sick time. We're scheduled to resume talks at
4:30 p.m. today at the Orangeburg Holiday Inn. This will be a committee-only
session. Should a settlement be reached today, we will hold a membership
meeting at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at the Best Western and a ratification vote
Friday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 6 to 9 p.m. We're planning on holding
a family picnic/recognition ceremony on the line Sunday. Let's hope that it
will also be a celebration.

(Ed.'s Note: For official updates and ways to help, go to
<http://www.nysna.org>.)

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

News from California:

UCSF Nurses Authorize a Walkout
RNs Protest Takeaways, Treatment after Failed Merger

Registered Nurses at the University of California San Francisco have voted
overwhelmingly to authorize the first strike in their history, the California
Nurses Association announced Friday.

No date for the walkout has yet been set. It would affect some 1,700 UCSF
nurses at the main campus on Parnassus and at Mt. Zion, where some services,
mostly outpatient, continue following the November shutdown of the emergency
room and most in-patient acute care services.

CNA representatives described the vote as "an emphatic statement" by UCSF
RNs, expressed in a "massive turnout" of UCSF nurses who participated and
voted on the walkout in membership meetings held over two days Wednesday and
Thursday.

"No nurse wants to go on strike, but at UCSF we will strike, if necessary, to
protect our patients and to ensure a level of care that they need and
deserve," said nurse negotiator Stephanie Isaacson, RN, an operating room
nurse at the hospital for the past nine years.

UCSF RNs are prepared to strike, she said, to protest a number of concession
proposals demanded by the University administration in its statewide
contract, as well as its desire to impose additional takeaways on UCSF nurses
following the dissolution of the calamitous UCSF-Stanford merger.

CNA has been in contract talks with UC officials for some two months on a new
statewide agreement for the 8,000 RNs at UC medical centers in San Francisco,
Los Angeles, Davis, San Diego, and Irvine, and at UC student health centers,
including Berkeley and Santa Cruz. Negotiations between CNA and the
University will resume on Monday for the re-intergration of the UCSF nurses
into the statewide contract, and on Tuesday for the statewide pact.

Key issues include:

.Fair compensation. RNs at UCSF and other facilities are compensated well
below the community standard. At UCSF, the University also wants to eliminate
annual seniority increases and other additional compensation received in
their UCSF-Stanford contract.

.Per diem rights that were provided in the UCSF-Stanford contract. Many per
diem employees - mostly nurses who receive higher pay in lieu of benefits -
have been employed by the UC for years, yet are denied equal rights and
protection against unjust termination.

.Seniority layoff rights. The University wants to ignore seniority rights in
layoffs, threatening the loss of its most experienced RNs who know the system
and UC patients.

.No mandatory overtime. Most San Francisco hospitals have already agreed to
ban or sharply restrict forced overtime.

.Excessive discipline that often forces RNs to work while ill. A nurse can be
disciplined for using more than one sick day within a three month period.
That effectively forces RNs to work while ill - a practice which is very
dangerous to patients who have weakened immune systems, such as the many
HIV/AIDS patients at UCSF. It also exposes the nurses to greater risk of
infection from ill patients, and the prospect of longer illness and time off
work.

"The University's proposals are disrespectful to the nurses who have given
years of service to UC patients and the University and helped make it one of
the most acclaimed health care systems in the nation," said Isaacson. She
also warned that UC demands "threaten to drive UC RNs out of the system to
work in other hospitals where they will have more equitable treatment and
better conditions."

Contact: David Johnson, 818-240-1900 x 110 or Charles Idelson, 510-273-2246.

(Ed.'s Note: Or go to <http://www.califnurses.org>.)

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

Nader stumps in city

Wednesday, May 17, 2000

By John J. Monahan, Telegram & Gazette Staff

WORCESTER-- Ralph Nader brought his Green Party campaign for president to the
city yesterday, calling on voters to abandon the Democratic and Republican
parties and to liberate political institutions from what he called the
clutches of global corporations.
The veteran consumer advocate intends to spend $5 million on his
campaign and to avoid the typical campaign "parading." He plans to join
citizens groups around the country fighting for mass transit improvements,
social justice, gun control, campaign finance reform and similar issues.
Mr. Nader doesn't dwell on whether he can be elected president. He said
he is focused on organizing a sustained political movement in the country
that is not beholden to corporate money -- one that will challenge corporate
influence in political decision-making and return the government to the
people.
If he gets a chance to participate in the presidential debates in the
fall, "anything could happen," he said.
Mr. Nader complained that the two major political parties and their
presidential candidates sound alike, and he believes they are selling out to
corporate interests. The Republican and Democratic candidates, he said, come
"with strings attached" that will make them more loyal to the corporate world
than to individuals who vote for them.
"I'm running for president because it is my way of saying this is the
only way we are going to regain control over our political institutions," Mr.
Nader said from the back porch of Dismas House, 30 Richards St., a halfway
house for former prison inmates about to return to the community.
Speaking later at Assumption College, Mr. Nader congratulated a group of
Worcester Medical Center nurses for settling their strike "on your own terms"
and standing up to a big medical corporation. "There should be no profit in
health care," he added.
The nurses in the audience applauded Mr. Nader when he complained that
managed health care restricts proper medical treatment.
Mr. Nader told a story about a boy in Wisconsin who fell and punctured
his nose with a stick. His mother, a nurse, asked the doctors to perform a CT
scan to check for brain injuries. The test, he said, was denied because an
emergency room doctor said it was not normal protocol.
Several days later, the boy became blind and will suffer serious
neurological disorders the rest of his life because a CT scan was not
performed, Mr. Nader said.
He asked the nurses seated in the front rows of the Assumption
auditorium if similar situations occurred here. He was greeted with a chorus
of affirmative "uh-huhs."
Mr. Nader believes that the first step in reforming health care is to
eliminate health maintenance organizations and launch a health insurance
program for the more than 40 million people in the country who don't have
insurance.
The candidate continued to condemn corporate influence, complaining that
it has even made its way into public schools.
"The MCAS tests are the precursor to corporatization of our public
schools," he said of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests.
The candidate complained that schools are spending too much time on
vocational education and memorization, while failing to teach civic lessons,
philosophy and other courses that help students to think for themselves.
While at Dismas House, Mr. Nader chided Gov. Paul Cellucci for vetoing
$40,000 in state money for the halfway house. He said it is much cheaper to
house prisoners who are returning to the community in a place such as Dismas
House than to keep them in jail.
Mr. Nader, who helped defeat plans to use state money to build a
football stadium in Hartford, has campaigned in support of Boston residents
opposed to building a new Fenway Park for the baseball team he referred to as
the "Boston Tax Sox."
He said tax money should be spent repairing schools and meeting real
needs, "not entertainment."
The candidate also said there is no need for major changes in the Social
Security system, which he said appears to be solvent through 2037 and which
should be able to continue operating through the next century with only minor
changes.
As for the competition, he said Vice President Al Gore may be an
environmental author, having written a book on the environment, but Mr. Nader
chided him for not acting as an environmentalist while in office. He called
Mr. Gore "wooden" and criticized his lack of aggressiveness on campaign
finance reform.
Texas Gov. George W. Bush, he said, "was born on third base and thought
he hit a triple." He called the Republican candidate "the king of corporate
welfare." He noted that Mr. Bush had paid $600,000 to be part-owner of the
Texas Rangers baseball team, and then, after tax money was used to build a
new stadium for the team, sold his share two years ago for $14 million.
Mr. Nader said that although the United States has had 19 years of
economic growth, 20 percent of the nation's children are living in poverty
and not enough is being done to respond to the shortage of adequate housing.
About 47 million people earn less than $10 an hour, he noted, calling for
stronger labor and union organizing laws.
Members of the Massachusetts Green Party, which has a chapter in Central
Massachusetts, have been collecting signatures on behalf of Mr. Nader's
candidacy. He needs 10,000 signatures by July 31 to earn a place on the
November presidential election ballot in Massachusetts.

© 2000 Worcester Telegram & Gazette

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