Labor & Employment Law

1,000 Nurses Rally for Safe Staffing

By James Parks

Members of National Nurses United rallied on Capitol Hill yesterday for safer patient care.

Some 1,000 registered nurses from around the country rallied on Capitol Hill yesterday to show their strong support for legislation to establish minimum nurse-to-patient ratios for all hospitals in the country. The bill is modeled after a California state law that sets minimum ratios there.

With signs that read “I’m A Patient Advocate,” ”Safe Patient Ratios Save Lives” and “Safe Lift Now,” the nurses, members of National Nurses United (NNU), made the case that the care they are able to give their patients is being hampered by long working hours and cutbacks so management can maximize its bottom line.

The rally was made up of nurses like Monica Sanchez, a registered nurse from El Paso, Texas, who told KFOX14-TV she traveled nearly 2,000 miles to send a message to Congress:

We need to do better. We really need to advocate for our patients and get the staffing ratios to help us help the patients.

Sanchez said the growing demand for health care, coupled with a shortage of nurses, has forced many nurses to take care of more patients.

There are nurses who can make mistakes and can get overwhelmed and just feel overworked. And that’s not good for the patients.   

On Tuesday, the nurses kicked off their legislative conference by enthusiastically adopting a resolution to promote national collective bargaining standards for all NNU contract agreements.

Saying there is an “orchestrated campaign across the country by employers to lower nurses’ standards in their contracts,” NNU Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro added:

We need to tell employers it’s a new day in America and registered nurses are going to stand up and not take it anymore.

Jill Furillo, NNU’s national bargaining director, told the nurses that in collective bargaining talks across the country, nurses are seeing egregious management proposals on the table “like we have not seen in 20 years.” Employers are determined, she said, to take away the hard-fought standards nurses have achieved through their unions, such as safer staffing, higher wages, pensions and health care benefits.

You can read the resolution on national standards here.  

Safety on the job is also a key issue for those on the health care front lines. U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis told conference participants that on average, 14 people a day die at work, and more than 4 million are seriously injured.

Most of those fatalities and injuries are easily prevented. This can no longer go on. We have to stop the madness.

The labor secretary told the nurses her department is working on new standards that will protect nurses, including one on infectious diseases.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on May 13, 2010 (boomark / email).