GREENFIELD, Mass., June 25, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --
Following a lack of progress by management on core RN issues during
bargaining Friday, Baystate Franklin Medical Center nurses who want
to care for their patients are preparing to be removed from the
hospital or stopped from going into BFMC at 7 p.m. on Sunday, June
25. The Baystate lock out will come ahead of a 24-hour
unfair labor practice strike scheduled by the nurses for
6 a.m. Monday.
"This one-day strike is about protecting our patients and
allowing nurses to live healthy, quality lives," said Donna Stern, co-chair of the nurses bargaining
unit for the 200 nurses at BFMC. "We have worked hard for months to
reach an agreement with local management that properly values and
respects nurses, patients and our community. Unfortunately, it is
clear that decision-makers in Springfield are unwilling to bargain in good
faith on issues like nurse workload and health insurance."
RN Public Schedule for Sunday - Tuesday
7 p.m. Sunday, June 25:
Nurses will be removed from the hospital or stopped from going in
to care for their patients by Baystate because of its announced
lock out. PRESS AVAILABILITY
6 a.m. Monday, June 26:
One-day strike begins. Nurses and supporters will gather outside
the main entrance of the hospital. Picketing will continue through
the duration of the 24-hour strike.
12 p.m. and 5 p.m. Monday, June 26: Rallies outside the
hospital with nurses, staff, community supporters and local
leaders.
6 a.m. Tuesday, June 27:
One-day RN strike ends. Nurses will gather outside the hospital and
those scheduled to work plan to enter BFMC to care for their
patients.
Hundreds of Nurse Shifts Left Vacant on BFMC Schedule Shows
Why RNs Prepared to Strike
Even as nurses prepared to strike in protest of Baystate's
failure to address RN workload and staffing problems, the hospital
continued its practice of scrambling to provide adequate nursing
care by leaving hundreds of RN shifts vacant on its schedule.
Over 42 days in just one hospital unit, Baystate managers
left 229 nurse shifts unfilled. These vacant shifts were on a
medical-surgical schedule issued by the hospital on June 16 that covers six weeks. This is an ongoing
problem at BFMC. On another six-week schedule from the same
unit, covering February 26 to April
8, the hospital left 179 nurse shifts unfilled.
"This problem speaks to the core of why nurses are prepared to
strike for one day," said Jillian Cycz,
RN and junior co-chair of the BFMC RN Bargaining Committee
who works on the medical-surgical unit. "The hospital is scrambling
to try and fill many open shifts, or is leaving them unfilled, to
the detriment of patient care. Baystate forces unsafe patient
assignments and unsafe working conditions on nurses and management
just won't bargain over our core issues. We cannot provide the high
quality care our patients deserve when we have too many patients at
one time, are fatigued and undernourished because we must work
through our breaks, and are required to stay beyond our scheduled
shifts in violation of state law."
As a result of these unfilled shifts, nurses are working endless
additional shifts usually without rest. In fact, 3,940 times in the
past 12 months nurses had to work for longer than 12 hours because
there was no one to relieve them. The longest shift was 17.5
hours. It is illegal in Massachusetts for an RN to ever work more than
16 hours – even during a state of emergency. A May 15 letter from the MNA committee members to
the hospital's president details the abusiveness of the never
ending shifts.
"We are working while exhausted…" the MNA BFMC Committee wrote
in a May 15 letter to BFMC President
Cindy Russo. "Among our most
important issues in negotiations for which a long-term solution is
urgently needed is understaffing that forces RNs and others to work
overtime and extra shifts without rest…Because there is not enough
staff, and we are forced to pick up additional shift after shift
after shift and can't go home at the end of our shifts. This is
antithetical to the safe patient care studies management was
(accurately) citing to us two years ago."
Core Outstanding RN Issues
- Baystate management refuses to bargain over RN workload and
staffing, including our call for an increase in RN staffing at the
hospital to ensure safe patient assignments and an end to unwanted
overtime, increased weekend work and unscheduled shifts.
- When nurses have too many patients to care for at one time,
they cannot be there when patients need them. When nurses are
forced to work extra hours or extra entire shifts, simply because
the hospital refuses to hire enough staff to cover all shifts,
nurses are exhausted and more prone to make errors. Nurses
can't tell their families when they'll be home, or when they'll
have a day off.
- On top of that, Baystate is demanding to cut holidays, sick
days and vacation time.
- Nurses are seeking to negotiate decent and affordable health
insurance benefits, after Baystate eliminated two health insurance
plans in the past year and a half, leaving substandard plans in
place. Baystate also refuses to bargain over this issue.
On March 15 BFMC RNS voted, by a
margin of 93%, to authorize their elected bargaining committee to
call a strike if and when they see fit to do so. To date, the
parties have held more than 20 bargaining sessions, many of which
with a federal mediator. BFMC nurses have filed 13 unfair labor
practice charges against Baystate for, among other reasons, failing
to bargain in good faith over mandatory subjects of bargaining such
as nurse workload and health insurance.
Contact Joe Markman at
781-571-8175 or jmarkman@mnarn.org for copies of the NLRB charges
nurses have filed against Baystate, unsafe scheduling
documentation, reports sent to the DPH showing instances of
mandatory overtime (which is unlawful under Mass law) or dozens of
text messages from BFMC management requesting nurses come to work
when they were scheduled to be off because of staffing
shortages.
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Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the
largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts. Its 23,000 members
advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of
nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of
nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view
of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies
on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.
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visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/baystate-franklin-medical-center-to-lock-out-nurses-at-7-pm-sunday-ahead-of-june-26-one-day-strike-rns-community-members-to-support-locked-out-nurses-300479305.html
SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association