Labor & Employment Law

Nurses Set 1-Day Strike for Patient Safety

By Mike Hall

Some 25,000 registered nurses in California and Minnesota will conduct a one-day strike June 10 over patient care issues in contract negotiations at 15 health systems and hospitals.

The nurses are members of the California Nurses Association (CNA) and the Minnesota Nurses Association(MNA), both affiliated with National Nurses United (NNU). The 13,000 California nurses work at five University of California medical centers and four other hospitals. The 12,000 Minnesota RNs come from six hospital systems that are a part of the Twin Cities hospital systems.

Both CNA and MNA say the key issue is safe nurse-to-patient staffing ratios. Short staffing has become the hospital industry standard across the country, leaving serious patient care issues unaddressed, according to CNA.

In California, staffing levels are set by state law that went into effect in 2004, after a years-long battle for the patient safety standard led by the CNA. But CNA spokesman Jill Furillo told BNA’s Daily Labor Report (subscription required) the

University of California is trying…to short-change the law and not implement all the provisions of the law.

The California nurses also want to guard against politicians and the hospital industry who seek to roll back patient safeguards, including the ratios.

MNA President Linda Hamilton says the nurses called for the “one-day, unfair labor practice strike for patient safety,” after “the hospitals left us with no choice.”

Our nurses always have and always will stand up in order to protect our patients and our profession. Twin Cities’ hospitals are dangerously understaffed, and our patients are needlessly suffering and sometimes even dying as a result. We want working conditions that ensure our patients receive the safest, highest-quality nursing care possible.

In April, a study by University of Pennsylvania researchers found California’s nurse-to-patient staffing law reduces patient deaths, allows nurses to spend more time with each patient and helps keep experienced nurses on the job.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on June 01, 2010 (boomark / email).