More than 600 nurses from Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester will reach a grim milestone on Monday: exactly eight months on what has become the longest nurses strike in state history.
From 6 a.m. to midnight each day, nurses stand on the picket line outside the hospital, hoping to end the impasse with its for-profit parent company, Tenet Healthcare.
“They’re not looking to settle a strike,” said Marlena Pellegrino, a nurse at Saint Vincent for 35 years and one of the co-chairs of the Massachusetts Nurses Association bargaining unit. “They’re looking to continue a war.”
Nurses went on strike on March 8, alleging there were not enough nurses to keep patients safe.
“We weren’t able to turn our patients on time. We weren’t able to give our patients medication on time. We couldn’t even feed our patients on time,” Pellegrino said.
In August, after months of negotiations, the MNA and Tenet appeared to be approaching a compromise.
“What was on the table for staffing was 4 to 5 patients per nurse,” Pellegrino said. “We were very close to an agreement.”
But in what the union called a retaliatory move, Tenet said that more than 100 nurses might not be able to return to the same positions they once held.
“This strike will continue until we can all return to our jobs,” said Dominique Muldoon, a nurse at the hospital for 19 years and co-chair of the MNA bargaining unit. “We believe no nurse should be left behind.”
Last month, the Massachusetts Congressional delegation sent Tenet a letter after it hired approximately 200 permanent replacement nurses and closed 111 beds.
“We are alarmed and dismayed by Tenet’s efforts to prolong this crisis with their demand that nurses be denied a return to the positions they held, many of them for decades, prior to the strike,” the delegation said in its letter. “Of more concern is Tenet’s decision to purposefully close desperately needed beds and eliminate services as a punitive ploy to force the nurses to end their strike, using patients and our communities as pawns in their anti-union strategy.”
In his Oct. 22 response, Dr. Saum Sutaria, Tenet’s CEO, said that both hiring permanent replacement nurses and closing beds were necessary, due to the strike.
“The service reductions were an incredibly difficult decision directly resulting from the unnecessarily prolonged strike and the lack of sufficient staffing to cover the requirements appropriately,” Sutaria said of the bed closures.
“Bringing in permanent replacement nurses, while certainly not our first choice, was a necessary step to ensure continuity of care and to preserve access to the most critical services for our community,” he added.
More than 75% of the replacement nurses have at least six years of experience, said Matt Clyburn, a spokesman for the hospital, and 35% have more than 20 years of experience.
The nurses on strike said they’ll remain on the picket line until every nurse gets their job back.
“We felt we had to take a stand on this,” Muldoon said. “It really is the ultimate step to make that sacrifice.”
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Worcester’s St. Vincent Hospital strike approaches 8 months - Boston Herald
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