People protest against a new paid sick leave policy outside of Jacobi Medical Center in Bronx borough of New York City. | David Dee Delgado/Getty Images
Nurses at Albany Medical Center are expected to walk off the job Tuesday for a one-day strike that could have lasting repercussions — not just for the contract at stake, but for the future and strength of the state’s largest nurses union.
A contract deal for the facility’s 2,000 nurses would be the first at the hospital and a major win for the New York State Nurses Association, which has been embroiled in an internal political fight for months. Current union leadership, which took over in December 2019, has yet to notch a contract victory.
Negotiations in recent weeks have stalled over pay increases, health benefits and whether the hospital can be an open shop, meaning union membership is voluntary. And on Nov. 20, the union’s members authorized the walkout as a “last-ditch effort to get a reasonable contract,” said NYSNA President Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez.
But critics inside and outside the union said the vote was rushed and could result in nurses crossing their own picket line — an outcome that would not only weaken NYSNA at the bargaining table, but would broadcast a larger discord between union members and leadership.
If the union succeeds, it could open the floodgates for nurses at other upstate hospitals, such as St. Peter's, to join NYSNA and help establish the union as a force in the Capital Region.
If it fails, the move could have domino effects at hospitals throughout the state.
“A lot of disgruntled people are talking about the union evaporating, or leaving,” said Peggy Desiderio, an emergency room nurse and co-president of the labor bargaining unit at Mount Sinai Morningside. “They feel like they’re standing there alone.”
She said, since members pay into a union pension fund, an exodus could seriously affect the fortunes “of all the members who have been working for years and are planning their futures around this pension.”
The move could also cast a shadow over the union’s message, by appearing to abandon patients amid the resurgence of a deadly pandemic — a talking point Albany Medical Center seized on this month in admonishing the union’s timing.
"While we have cared for this region during the pandemic, NYSNA has exploited the pandemic," said Albany Med President and CEO Dennis McKenna at a recent press conference. “A strike is always, by definition, disruptive to a medical mission. But a strike in the middle of a pandemic for baseless reasons is totally irresponsible.”
McKenna alleges that nurses were not given sufficient time to weigh the ramifications of the strike before the union called a vote.
"Hundreds of nurses were turned away from being given the opportunity to vote," he said. "This was a stacked vote, and it produced exactly the results that NYSNA and a small, vocal minority of nurses wanted: a strike."
NYSNA leaders scoffed at the assertion and Albany Med declined to provide any evidence to support the claim.
Hospital spokesperson Matthew Markham insisted the hospital presented "a fair contract" but could not say whether NYSNA's bargaining unit pushed for a tentative agreement and it was voted down, or rejected the contract out of hand in favor of a strike. Neither the union nor Albany Med could say how many nurses voted on the hospital's offer.
Sheridan-Gonzalez said she had "no influence" on the nurses' decision to strike.
"This is not something we would push or promote," she said. "That's something that members would reach after a desperate point.”
NYSNA members and staffers have privately expressed concerns that Sheridan-Gonzalez is generally too eager to strike and less inclined to bargain with management. As POLITICO reported last month, union leaders have embraced the Democratic Socialists of America, causing a rift with staffers and members who argue the ideological purity of the DSA risks isolating moderate Democrats in Albany, not to mention hospital executives.
Three former NYSNA staffers said the accusation of a "stacked" no-vote leading to a strike at Albany Med is similar to an episode that played out at Montefiore Medical Center in 2019, where Sheridan-Gonzalez worked for nearly three decades before her current role as union president.
Those individuals said Sheridan-Gonzalez encouraged nurses at the hospital to vote against a tentative agreement, which would also cover contracts for nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian and Mount Sinai. Nurses at those systems and former NYSNA staffers said Montefiore nurses had to cast their votes for a contract twice because of irregularities with the first vote, though they ultimately approved the contract.
NYSNA is also negotiating its first contract without Jill Furillo, the union's former executive director who was allegedly pushed out in December before her contract ended. She was viewed as a "closer" in negotiations, from contracts to state legislation, members said. The negotiations at Albany Med are the first under the new executive director, Patricia Kane.
The onset of the pandemic has changed the relationship between medical professionals and hospitals across the state. Nurses were hailed as heroes for treating the infected even as their hospitals were accused of not providing sufficient protective equipment and forcing nurses to work long hours in dangerous conditions.
But Albany Med was facing growing unrest among nurses even before the pandemic.
“Before we had Covid, our conditions were horrible,” said Tonia Bazel, a nurse on the main Covid-19 floor at Albany Med who spoke at a NYSNA rally last week. "That's why we started the union. That is why we are here: to fix things.”
NYSNA spent $1 million organizing the nurses who voted 2 to 1 to unionize in 2018, according to an individual familiar with the effort.
Since then, members say hospital management has used union-busting tactics ahead of the strike — complaints that have been filed with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Nov. 30 and the National Labor Relations Board on Nov. 24.
NYSNA declined to provide specifics of what it’s seeking in the contract.
The outcome of Tuesday’s action could have an immediate impact on a downstate facility facing many of the same issues.
The nurses at Montefiore New Rochelle Hospital, which was at the center of an early hot spot for the pandemic, have also authorized a two-day strike in December over working conditions amid the pandemic and their own contract negotiations.
The longer the contract talks drag on, nurses say, the harder it is to manage a renewed surge in cases throughout the state.
“We are expendable in their eyes,” Bazel said of hospital management. “We don’t want to strike. Come to the table. Give us a fair contract. Treat your nurses with respect. We are the front lines.”
"strike" - Google News
December 01, 2020 at 06:46AM
https://ift.tt/2KVETjE
New York's largest nurses union rolls the dice on Albany strike - Politico
"strike" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2WheuPk
https://ift.tt/2VWImBB
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "New York's largest nurses union rolls the dice on Albany strike - Politico"
Post a Comment