National Nurses United

WRAP-UP REPORT California registered nurses at two Southern California hospitals, Barstow Community Hospital in San Bernardino County and Fallbrook Hospital in San Diego County, successfully voted to unionize in May, ensuring that hundreds more RNs will now have a voice and a vehicle for improving patient care and workplace conditions. The union victories are also significant for building the power of CNA/NNU nurses in the high desert and San Diego regions of the state. ���As patient advocates, we voted yes to have a collective RN voice,��� said Cynthia Burns, an obstetrics RN at Barstow Community Hospital. ���Patient safety is our number-one priority.��� On April 17, registered nurses, parents and their kids, and community members gathered at Kaiser Permanente���s Hayward campus to protest the corporation���s plans to close the pediatrics unit there. Eliminating the unit would mean that parents would need to drive up to 30 miles north or south to Oakland or Santa Clara for inpatient pediatric care, a huge burden for families with a sick child and for those without their own car. Protesters marched around the hospital, many with kids in tow, holding balloons and signs that read, ���Kaiser says drive, not thrive.��� Registered nurses like Kristine Richter are fighting to save the unit. ���Oakland or Santa Clara is too far, way too far, to drive,��� said Richter. ���Our members need healthcare in their communities.��� Maine registered nurses represented by the Maine State Nurses Association/NNU at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor ratified a three-year contract in late May with important improvements in patient safety and enhanced professional and economic standards. The agreement, which covers 850 nurses at the Medical Center, gives more control to the bedside nurse over issues like patient assignments and RN-to-patient ratios. The hospital has also committed to hire more nurses and work with the professional practice 10 N AT I O N A L N U R S E LEFT AND CENTER: RNs from Barstow Community Hospital in Southern California celebrate their unionizing victory; RNs, kids, and community members protest Kaiser Permanente's plans to close its pediatrics unit in Hayward, Calif. RIGHT: Nurses at Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center in Houston, Texas, vote to ratify their mid-term contract committee to increase the number of ���resource nurses��� throughout the facility. Patient advocacy language was strengthened which gives nurses the right to legally object to a patient assignment that is unsafe. The registered nurses also won language that requires EMMC to install a metal detector in the emergency room, a vital issue for the RNs as there have been an increasing number of incidents in which staff were harmed or could have been harmed. ���Security in the emergency department was one of our key issues in bargaining,��� said Cokie Giles, an EMMC RN and NNU executive committee member, adding that the measure benefits not just nurses, but all other staff and patients. ���We are very pleased to have been able to win this provision in contract negotiations.��� The new contract includes wage increases between 7 and 13 percent and health benefit security language that will keep experienced nurses at the bedside, as well as provisions to strengthen the ability for nurses to schedule time off. Veterans Affairs veterans affairs rns at the Buffalo, N.Y. facility recently won a very important grievance related to mandatory overtime.��Local Director Bonita Reid, RN, filed a grievance after noticing an alarming trend of increasing mandatory overtime. Due to public law 111163, the VA is required to have contingency plans in place to avoid the use of mandatory overtime except in cases of bona fide, nonrecurring emergencies. The grievance was settled in favor of the nurses by significantly increasW W W. N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G ing the float pool and putting action plans in place to reduce the amount of mandatory overtime. On the national level, a grievance has been filed on the implementation of the same public law, and VA nurses are still waiting for that outcome. At the Manhattan VA, nurses are tackling multiple unresolved issues ranging from bullying to unsafe staffing to environmental safety issues. Local Director Raymond Fletcher, RN and his team have been working tirelessly to address these concerns. Having gotten little to no response, they will be escalating these issues outside the local facility and may need to take to the streets to draw public attention to these safety and patient care��issues.���� At the Jesse Brown VA in Chicago, administrators narrowly avoided an informational picket by nurses in April when they called a meeting with highranking national and regional department officials in response to issues identified by NNU-VA nurses and Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). The veterans group partnered with NNU to expose RN understaffing and general staffing, bullying behaviors,��inadequate access to women���s healthcare, issues with mental healthcare provision, including suicide prevention, and a myriad of other issues. At the meeting, leaders from IVAW and NNU including Local Director Adelena Marshall, RN, NNU-VA Chair Irma Westmoreland, RN, and NNU-VA staff presented their concerns to VA management. As a result, VA is evaluating the practice of at least one medical doctor, improving staffing levels, has hired traveling VA nurses to address short staffing, and is completing changes in human resources processes to decrease the barrier to quickly hiring RN staff.��They have provided NNU a written plan to address each of the issues nurses raised. One high note is how Marshall was able to get discipline dropped for an RN after she presented evidence that the RN had been bullied and treated unfairly as a result of reporting patient safety issues. ���Staff report A P R I L | M AY 2 0 1 2

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