Nearly 800 nurses at a Bucks County hospital went on strike Tuesday morning over what they describe as dangerously low staffing levels that prevent them from providing high-quality care to patients.
It’s a power move for the nurses at St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne, Pa., who are walking off the job as coronavirus cases surge across the region — and after eight months of caring for patients in a pandemic.
Low staffing, they say, is tied to low wages.
“Nurses are literally fleeing to other hospitals 20 minutes away where they can make $6 to $7 more an hour,” said nurse Kathy McKamey, who’s worked at St. Mary for 10 years.
In a statement, officials from Trinity Health, the Catholic health system that owns St. Mary, said it will hire “qualified, professional agency nurses” during the strike so that St. Mary can remain open.
The strike is planned for Tuesday and Wednesday but PASNAP nurses will not be allowed back to work by their employer until Sunday because Trinity Health officials say that’s how long it will take to safely transition work away from the replacement nurses.
The nurses at St. Mary, who voted to unionize with Pennsylvania nurses union PASNAP last year, were bargaining their first contract when COVID hit. They’ve now been in negotiations for more than a year.
Officials said the union rejected a compensation offer that is “very competitive for nurses working in Bucks County" while also taking into account the financial impact of the pandemic. They also criticized the nurses for the timing of the strike.
“We are hearing concerns from our community that PASNAP, which has placed patient safety at the center of their platform, would choose this time — when the country and our local community contend with a COVID-19 surge — to exercise their right to strike," officials said in a statement.
But COVID has also made the nurses more powerful. In some ways, it’s the ideal time for them to get what they want. Sympathy for health care workers is high — the pandemic has led essential workers to be seen as heroes. Healthcare workers are in high demand.
Just how much can workers win during the pandemic? The St. Mary strike will be an early data point as labor advocates seek to answer that question. The strike will also shape worker actions to come. Two other hospitals where PASNAP represents workers — Einstein Medical Center and St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children — have already authorized a strike vote.
Trinity Health, headquartered in Livonia, Mich., owns more than 90 hospitals across 22 states, including five in the Philadelphia area. The 371-bed St. Mary made an average of $58 million in profit in the last three years, according to Trinity Health’s audited financial documents. In 2019, it was the most profitable major acute care hospital in Southeastern Pennsylvania, after the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, according to an analysis by the Pa. Health Care Cost Containment Council.
James Woodward, CEO of Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic, which runs Trinity’s Philadelphia-area hospitals, had a total compensation of $978,092 in the year ending June 2019, a nearly 9% increase over the previous year, according to federal records. Trinity Health CEO Michael Slubowski’s total compensation was nearly $2.5 million in the year ending June 2019. By comparison, that same year, Einstein CEO Barry Freedman’s total compensation was $4 million. Clint Matthews, CEO of Tower Health, which co-owns St. Christopher’s, had a total compensation of nearly $2.8 million.
In April, Trinity Health furloughed 350 workers, or 12% of its staff, and cut executive pay by 20% in response to losses due to COVID.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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