Labor & Employment Law

Temple Hospital Workers Strike

By James Parks

Nurses and health professionals demonstrate how Temple’s proposed “gag clause” would silence them.

Today, 1,000 nurses and 500 health care workers at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia set up a picket line that eventually grew to more than 1,200 for a noon-time rally.  

Members of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP), an affiliate of national Nurses United (NNU), have been without a contract since September.

 Maureen May, president of the nurses union, told the crowd:

 We will be on strike until Temple is ready to begin a relationship of cooperation and respect. This strike is about our fundamental rights as workers and healthcare professionals, which the hospital seeks to undermine with their ?best and final’ offer. Their offer has not changed for months, despite the union’s commitment to good faith bargaining. 

Under Temple’s last offer, individual nurses and healthcare professionals could be disciplined or fired if the hospital believes he or she made a publicly disparaging comment about the hospital. Management also is demanding a huge increase in health care costs and has refused to discuss nurses’ concerns over staffing levels.

Jackie Silver, president of the healthcare professional and technical union, told the rally:

We make Temple look good every day when we are delivering patient care. We know the patients and take care of them and their families. Temple’s bargaining posture and proposals would harm, not improve, patient care, and we cannot accept that. This is the reason we are on strike-our patients, our professions, and our fundamental right to stand up to keep Temple a safe, quality hospital.

You can send Temple a message here. Follow the Temple workers on Twitter and Facebook.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on March 31, 2010 (boomark / email).