[ad_1]
EAST NORRITON — Around 90 nurses at Suburban Community Hospital will hit the picket line starting early Friday as contract negotiations with the out-of-state hospital owner proved unsuccessful.
Contracts expired for members of the Suburban General Nurses Association, affiliates of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, earlier this fall. Staffing, wages and health care were top priorities for union leadership as they went to the bargaining table with Prime Healthcare, of Ontario, Calif., which acquired the medical facility back in 2016.
Negotiations have been ongoing for the past three months, according to Suburban General Nurses Association Co-president Shannan Giambrone. Roughly two dozen nurses participated in an informational picketing session back in October, and they gave notice of their intent to strike last week to the hospital located at 2701 Dekalb Pike in East Norriton Township.
“We’re disappointed that this is the path that Prime has chosen to take, but the members, they’re on board, and they’re angry that Prime has pushed them into the situation,” Giambrone told MediaNews Group. “But they’re angry with their employer, and … while they don’t take it lightly, they know that it’s the right action to make change for the future.”
Giambrone, a nurse for the past 26 years — 23 at Suburban Hospital — has previously said there have been instances where workloads have increased to 6-to-1 patient-to-nurse ratios, which is a level not listed in their contracts. While she’s participated in informational picketing sessions before, neither she nor the hospital has gone on strike.
“It’s heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking to see what they’ve done to our hospital,” Giambrone said.
While Giambrone acknowledged that “we’ve got a good working relationship with our local administration,” she said that conversations with the West Coast counterparts have been uneasy.
“It seems in California, which is a very different environment for health care than Pennsylvania is in many ways,” Giambrone said. “I mean, patient care is patient care, but … the culture is just different, the patient population is just different, and so we sit here sort of waiting for somebody who has no idea what our life out here is like making decisions, and leave everybody hanging in the balance.”
“So for … many of us, we have a lot of longevity at suburban. This is our family — not just the staff of our family — but we live locally. So our families do come to this hospital as well, and it has been heartbreaking to see what they have done to our hospital,” she continued. “It was an amazing, strong community hospital, and that they have brought it to the point where the nurses feel so strongly that they need to be not at the bedside anymore. It’s very sad.”
When referencing the ongoing negotiation process, she said that “it’s taken them up until a few weeks ago just to even start to address those issues” of highest importance to them, specifically health care, staffing needs and wages.
“So it’s a bit contentious with California because they chose to delay giving us any information. When we put the straight notice in, their first response was you’re not giving us enough time to work on this, and our response was we told you on day one, these are the three issues.”
Giambrone expressed further disappointment when she learned that Thursday’s scheduled bargaining session was canceled.
“And our response was, well you could work to prevent the strike, or you can cancel, and prepare for the strike. That choice is yours, and they chose to cancel,” Giambrone said.
To that end, Giambrone said she feels they’ve done all they could.
“We don’t take this decision lightly,” she said. “If I’m going to stand in front of the membership, and say to them, ‘OK guys, we need to walk away from our patients, and we need to go outside, and lose our pay, and all of these things,’ I want to know that we have exhausted every measure we possibly could before I ask that of people, and I can say confidently, we have.”
The strike outside Suburban will look similar to October’s informational picketing session, Giamborne said. Participating members will walk the line outside the hospital in roughly 2.5-hour shifts during designated morning and afternoon times on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday, according to a schedule from the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals.
Giambrone stressed “It is not a 24-hour demonstration,” and no striking will take place on Christmas Day. The schedule does involve some coordination with nurses who are striking at Bucks County-based Lower Bucks Hospital, also owned by Prime Healthcare.
But Giambrone stressed the nurses at Suburban Community Hospital are ready to do what they have to do.
“They feel like they are finally, finally getting to really push back on a company,” Giambrone said. “When you sit at a bargaining table … it’s a very slow drug out process, and the people who aren’t able to be a part of the bargaining committee, then they’re just getting piecemeal information.”
“They don’t feel as involved. They don’t feel like they’ve been able to affect change,” she continued. “So to actually be able to get outside, and show this company that’s been treating us, and our patients, so poorly for so long, they’re happy to be able to make that kind of an impact.”
In a statement to MediaNews Group, Michelle Aliprantis, Prime Healthcare’s regional director of marketing and communications for the Pennsylvania region, maintained the hospital will remain open “fully staffed with qualified temporary resources across our nursing and non-nursing departments” throughout the strike period.
“Proposals have been delivered to the union from the hospitals that would increase wages and provide a valuable healthcare plan, maintain important benefits, and be competitive with other hospitals in the market,” Aliprantis said in a statement. “It is disappointing that despite progress being made, the union has walked away from negotiations and has chosen to strike, but that will not impact our commitment to providing quality patient care to our communities throughout the holidays and always.”
As Giambrone and others prepared to assemble, she sought to pass along a message to members of the community.
“We’re doing this for them, and that I still would say when you drive past the hospital … when the nurses are outside protesting, and it seems like maybe that’s not the place you want to get your care, just remember that those nurses care so much about you that they would take this battle on for you,” she said. “And so maybe that’s the place you really want to be because you’ve got nurses in that hospital that can fight back and not worry about any repercussions from their boss, and really just put their patients first.”
[ad_2]
Source_link
