National Nurses United

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 5 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 N A T I O N A L N U R S E 11 WRAP-UP REPORT California WESTMINSTER registered nurses at Kindred Hospital Westminster in Westminster, Calif. held a one-day strike on Sept. 3 for a fair contract. Conditions have continued to erode while management has delayed a contract for 20 months, including chronic short staffing, lack of adequate meal and rest period breaks, a high turn-over rate, and the attrition of experienced RNs seeking better working conditions in the region. In April 2015, the California Department of Public Health cited the hospital for various patient care violations. Kindred is a long-term acute-care facility owned by Kentucky-based Kindred Healthcare, which over the past year has made more than $15 million in profits from the facility and Kindred Hospital Brea in nearby Brea, Calif. VALENCIA rns at henry mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in Valencia voted Sept. 17 to approve a new three-year contract agree- ment that provides some additional patient care protections and economic gains. One important issue in the dispute was a hospital demand that the RNs surrender their right to sue over employer discrimina- tion and wage and hour violations, and participate in class action suits. Under the contract, RNs can continue to have full legal rights by opting out of the demand. Among the provisions, the hospital agreed to end a practice of having RNs double up patient assignments during meal and rest breaks, which violates state law on mini- mum staffing protections at all times. The RNs will earn pay increases of up to 24 percent over the 3.4 years of the agreement, retroactive to January when the prior contract expired. LOS ANGELES registered nurses at Kaiser Permanente's Los Angeles Medical Center held a vigil Aug. 27 to press the hospital giant to invest in safer patient care for children at its Southern Cali- fornia flagship facility. LAMC is Kaiser's regional pediatrics hub, providing heart surgery and cancer treatment for thousands of Southern California kids. LAMC RNs have for months warned that inadequate staffing regularly puts children at risk, and managers are inappropriately floating nurses out of their primary specialty areas to take care of patients elsewhere. International nurse volunteers with Registered Nurse Response Network (RNRN), a disaster relief project of National Nurses United/California Nurses Foundation, officially completed their sixth and final 2015 deployment aboard a U.S. Navy military command ship as part of the Con tinuing Promise (CP-15) mission that pro - vided humanitarian aid to more than 120,000 people in 11 countries throughout South Amer- ica, Central America, and the Caribbean. The mission is a joint effort be tween the U.S. Navy, Army, Air Force, civilian mariners, and a broad coalition of non-governmental organizations, including RNRN. "I was humbled to be able to spend time helping people who don't have access to routine healthcare," said Lauri Hoagland, FNP, of Ashland, Oregon, who participated in the Haiti stop. "I love doing it; you really get to hone in on taking care of people that you would typically not have a chance to care for." On board the ship, nurses assisted the CP-15 surgical team, in conjunction with NGOs, in performing a variety of procedures, including general, pediatric, plastics, interventional radi- ology, gynecology, urology, orthopedics, and ophthalmology. At each stop, nurses would also do rotations at clinics set up in the community, caring for local residents, who often showed up by the hundreds as early as 3 a.m. "It's an amazing feeling to be able to help someone and to see them walk away, know- ing they are in a better position," said Amy Bowen, an emergency room nurse from Lake Ozark, Mo. "It's such a rewarding trip. The [people we treat] show so much appre- ciation. I just want to help as much as I can." To make a tax-deductible donation to support the RNRN disaster relief fund, go to nationalnursesunited.org/rnrn-disaster- relief-fund. Veterans Affairs nnu-va this summer settled a major national grievance over how RNs and NPs are paid for shift and weekend differentials, winning retroactive pay back to May 2010 for all VA members at NNU facilities. Under Public Law 111–163, all RNs and NPs should be compensated as follows: for shift differentials, if a nurse works four or more continuous hours after 6 p.m., shift differential should be paid for the entire tour. For weekend differentials, week- end premium is paid for all hours worked in a continuous period of service, any part of which is connected to midnight Friday or midnight Sunday. For example, if one works a continuous tour from 4 p.m. Friday through 7 a.m. Satur- day, one would be entitled to 15 hours of week- end differential. Local payroll offices will conduct an individual audit summary for all current and former RNs and NPs. —Staff report From left: Kindred RNs on strike, Kaiser Los Angeles Medical Center pediatric nurses hold safe staffing vigil; RNRN volunteers on their humanitarian medical mission with Continuing Promise 2015.

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