Hospitals are bracing for strikes; LABOR DISPUTE
BY: Victoria Colliver, The San Francisco Chronicle (California)
Picket signs may be a common sight at Bay Area hospitals starting Friday, when registered nurses at Sutter Health hospitals in Alameda and Contra Costa counties begin a seven-day strike that might overlap with a strike at UC medical centers.
Hospitals workers at UCSF and the four other UC medical centers, including respiratory therapists, MRI technicians and licensed vocational nurses, are scheduled to walk off their jobs at 4 a.m. Tuesday and not return until the same hour Thursday unless UC officials are successful in obtaining a restraining order to stop the strike.
The nearly 13,000 striking UC workers, represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, are expected to be joined on the first day by up to 3,400 employees from the University Professional & Technical-Communication Workers of America Local 9119.
The unions held rallies Wednesday at the UC medical centers in preparation for the strike, which centers on cuts to workers’ pension and health benefits. At the UC regents meeting in Sacramento on Wednesday, police arrested 13 health care workers during a sit-down protest.
UCSF officials said in a statement that the strike is over a new pension for employees hired on or after July 1 that 14 other bargaining units have accepted, with the exception of the two unions involved in the upcoming labor action.
“In anticipation of a strike, we are working to reduce the number of our patients at the hospital by one-half,” UCSF officials said in the statement. “A strike also will cost UCSF millions of dollars every day, money that would otherwise be used to support patient care as well as our missions of education and research.”
The Sutter strike is part of a long-standing dispute between nurses, represented by the California Nurses Association, and the hospital network’s management over various issues including sick pay and health coverage.
The nurses have settled contracts at many Northern California Sutter hospitals over the past six months after a series of strikes. The last strike was held Dec. 24.
The upcoming strike, the longest in the two-year negotiations, is scheduled to begin at 7 a.m. Friday and end at the same time May 24 at the following hospitals: Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley and Oakland, Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, San Leandro Hospital and Sutter Delta Medical Center in Antioch.
“We are deeply disappointed with the unions’ decisions to ask employees to walk out on our patients,” Alta Bates Summit officials said in a statement. “It is unclear what the union hopes to accomplish through this strike since the past eight walkouts have done nothing to help bring us closer to agreement.”
Meanwhile, nurses at Stanford and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospitals voted May 7 to authorize a strike. A date for the strike has not been set.
Their union says the strike is in response to the hospitals’ failure to offer acceptable contract terms after months of negotiations. Union and hospital officials continued negotiations earlier this week.
” “In anticipation of a strike, we are working to reduce the number of our patients at the hospital by one-half.” ”
UCSF officials in a statement.
[Source]: San Francisco Chronicle
