GREENFIELD, Mass., Feb. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The
registered nurses of Baystate Franklin Medical Center, represented
by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, agreed on Friday to
withdraw their one-day strike notice after Baystate Health
requested the withdrawal in order to return to the bargaining table
on February 26. Nurses agreed to
bargain while hoping for progress toward a contract that must
include improvements to RN staffing and patient care, along with
decent health insurance.
A 24-hour nurse strike had been scheduled to start at
7 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 28.
Baystate had threatened to lock out BFMC nurses from 7 p.m.
Tuesday, Feb. 27 through 7 p.m.
Friday, March 2. BFMC nurses
retain the right to re-issue a new 10-day notice of a new one-day
strike if necessary.
"Our community wants to see us reach a resolution that protects
and improves patient care," said RN Donna Stern, Senior Co-Chair of
the BFMC RN Bargaining Committee. "We have been seeking to
negotiate a fair contract all along, and we hope that the
withdrawal of our strike notice gives us space to reach an
agreement that benefits our patients, our nurses and our
community."
On February 8, BFMC nurses voted
by 85% to authorize a potential one-day strike. Key issues:
- Baystate refuses to improve patient care conditions
- Baystate wants the right to make nurse staffing
worse
- Baystate wants to force its nurses to take terrible health
insurance from Baystate's own insurance company, Health New
England
Why Inadequate RN Staffing is a Patient Care Problem:
- By failing to schedule enough nurses or forcing nurses to work
through our meal breaks and routinely past the end of our shifts,
Baystate is making it more and more difficult for exhausted,
overworked nurses to provide the best care for our patients.
- Nurses worked, were pressured or forced to work 3,980 shifts of
12 hours or more in one year. National best practices say nurses
SHOULD NOT work more than 12 hours.
Safe Patient Care Solutions
- Nurses are seeking specific staffing improvements in specific
hospital units, along with the proposal that charge nurses not be
required to take a patient assignment. This is tied to a proposal
that management hire the nurses it needs to staff its staffing
grids and not worsen staffing by assigning even more patients to
all other nurses.
- Charge nurses need to be able to effectively coordinate care
and assist other nurses. If their patient assignments are
eliminated or reduced but their fellow nurses have even heavier
patient assignments, the problems nurses have identified for years
will worsen.
Decent Health Insurance
- Mid-contract, BFMC management took away the only two decent
health plans offered to nurses: Gold and Silver. Nurses are just
asking them to bring back a decent health plan.
- Baystate Health owns Health New England and Baystate President
& CEO Dr. Mark Keroack is also
CEO of the health plan. Baystate is self-insured, meaning that the
health insurance the nurses get is not from an outside provider
that sets the cost. Rather the cost is set by Baystate/Health New
England and any additional cost to the nurses means more money for
Baystate/Health New England.
- In addition, Baystate agreed to provide Noble Hospital nurses
the Silver plan when they settled in November 2017.
- Baystate is advertising that the people of the Pioneer Valley
and Springfield areas should come
to them for care, while being unable to provide a healthcare to
their own employees.
Baystate Profits
- Baystate Health has the financial means to provide safe
staffing and fair RN benefits and wages. It ended 2014 and 2015
with a combined $121 million in
profit, according to the state. During fiscal year 2016, BFMC alone
reported $2.2 million in
profits.
Bargaining Background
BFMC nurses held a one-day strike on June
26, 2017 after voting by a 93% margin to authorize the
strike. The nurses were preemptively locked out of the hospital by
Baystate management, who kept the RNs from caring for their
patients the evening before the strike. The lockout lasted for two
days following the strike and involved Baystate spending
$1 million to hire replacement nurses
from outside the community instead of allowing BFMC nurses to care
for their patients once the strike concluded.
Following the strike, Baystate gave its "best and final" to BFMC
nurses on July 21. BFMC nurses voted
to reject that offer on August 15.
The MNA has filed more than 20 unfair labor practice charges
against Baystate on behalf of BFMC nurses for, among other reasons,
failing to bargain in good faith over mandatory subjects of
bargaining such as nurse workload and health insurance.
BFMC nurses began negotiating for a new contract in November 2016 to replace the contract that
expired Dec. 31, 2016. A federal
mediator is involved in negotiations.
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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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SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association