800 nurses at St. Vincent Hospital go on strike

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — Hundreds of nurses at a Massachusetts hospital walked off the job on Monday morning after failing to reach an agreement with management over staffing levels.

Nurses and their supporters gathered outside St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester at dawn holding signs that said “Safe Staffing Now” and “Picketing for our Patients and our Community.”

The strike started after negotiations with Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, which owns the hospital, broke down. The hospital has about 800 nurses.

“We are sad to see that Tenet holds so little value for our patients, yet we are resolved to do whatever it takes for as long as it take to protect our patients, as it is safer to strike now than allow Tenet to continue endangering our patients every day on every shift,” nurse Marlena Pellegrino, co-chair of the local bargaining unit of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, said in a statement.

“We are resolved to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to protect our patients, as it is safer to strike now than allow Tenet to continue endangering our patients,” she said. “We are always ready to get back to the table to negotiate whenever Tenet is ready do the same.”

“They absolutely refuse to give us any additional staff where it’s needed, which is on the inpatient units, on med-surge floors, and specifically in our emergency rooms also,” said Marie Ritacco, a registered nurse and the vice president of the Massachusetts Nursing Association.

The hospital issued a statement Sunday saying they are disappointed in what they called an irresponsible decision to call a strike in the middle of an ongoing pandemic, but said they are “fully prepared and appropriately staffed to continue to provide safe, high-quality care to our patients.”

Hospital management also said that over “18 months of negotiations, we listened attentively to our nurses and made multiple increasing offers to the MNA” — the Massachusetts Nurses Association, which is representing the striking nurses.

They said that “because of the costs associated with the strike, the hospital may revise its offer to account for the economic impact of the MNA’s action.”

The MNA said the decision to strike followed what they described as a concerted effort over the last two years by the nurses to convince Tenet to improve the patient care conditions at the facility — poor conditions they say that have only been exacerbated by the pandemic.

“It’s just an untenable situation and the losers are our patients, and we just cannot tolerate it any longer,” Ritacco said.

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Adding insult to injury, the union said, the same day nurses voted to authorize the strike, Tenet announced annual profits of more than $400 million.

“There has been no negotiation over staffing because they’re just not willing to discuss it,” Ritacco said.

The last time St. Vincent nurses went on strike was in 2000, when a 49-day work stoppage helped them get their first union contract.

“Our patients deserve to have a nurse when they need a nurse,” Ritacco said.

Cox Media Group