NewsBriefs_OCT 2/9/12 5:30 PM Page 6
NEWS BRIEFS
Sutter and Long Beach RNs Strike
For Safe Care, Fair Contract
CALIFORNIA
A
bout 6,000 registered nurses
in Northern and Southern California, represented by the California Nurses Association/
National Nurses United, went
on a one-day strike Dec. 22 to challenge their
employers' insistence during recent contract
negotiations on demanding unnecessary takeaways and in refusing to address serious
staffing issues jeopardizing patient care.
RNs at nine Sutter Health facilities,
covered under five separate contracts in the
San Francisco Bay Area, took to the streets
over more than 200 concessions that Sutter
wants, which nurses believe will seriously
erode standards for how nurses, as well as
patients, are treated. For example, Sutter
wants to make changes to sick leave policies,
including eliminating paid sick time that
would promote nurses coming to work ill –
on top of increasing health benefit costs to
all nurses. Sutter has also proposed a host of
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N AT I O N A L N U R S E
other changes that would discourage or
penalize nurses from speaking up and advocating without fear of retaliation on behalf
of their patients, and also seeks to eliminate
the role of charge nurses at some facilities.
As a hospital chain, Sutter has cut numerous
W 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
essential community services by eliminating
units, or moving particular procedures to
facilities which could not be easily accessed
(bone marrow transplants to Sacramento
from Berkeley, as an example), and pushing
to close entire hospitals. CNA in conjunction
DECEMBER 2011
