Labor Relations Monitor - Generic: CNA Begins Second Strike At Sutter Facilities in Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO--The California Nurses Association Dec. 13 began a two-day strike at Sutter Health hospitals in the San Francisco Bay area as the hospitals used replacement nurses to fill vacancies.

Nine contracts cover 5,000 registered nurses the facilities, which include St. Luke's and California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, Alta Bates Summit in Oakland and Berkeley, Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley and San Leandro Hospital in San Leandro, and Mills-Peninsula in Burlingame and San Mateo.

Negotiations to replace the pacts, which are bargained at the individual facilities, began last spring. The union seeks a single master contract, which Sutter characterizes as a way to collect a $4 million windfall in new dues and to bring total Sutter RN dues to $11 million.

CNA, frustrated with negotiations that stalled over nurse-patient staffing ratios and retirement issues, Oct. 10-11 struck Sutter hospitals in Northern California (196 DLR A-12, 10/11/07). Nurses at some Sutter facilities were locked out where contracts with replacement nurses extended past the two-day strike (198 DLR A-8, 10/15/07).

'Overwhelming Participation.'

“We have overwhelming participation in the strike. If anything, the nurses are even more angry at Sutter's arrogance and their intransigence,” CNA spokesman Chuck Idelson said.

“We had negotiations at most of these hospitals since October but it's like a show trial for Sutter. They show up, they don't make any new proposals [and] they don't give” counter proposals, Idelson said. The most recent negotiations were two days before the strike, he said.

Sutter, which set up a Web site for the media to share its side of the dispute, said up to half of CNA members crossed picket lines at some hospitals during the October strike.

Sutter system spokeswoman Karen Garner said about half of the nurses scheduled to work at Eden Medical Center and San Leandro Hospital crossed the picket line for the morning shift Dec. 13. At Alta Bates Summit in Oakland, the hospital needed to staff 126 RN positions “and 122 of their RNs showed up to work. So they were very overstaffed this morning,” Garner told BNA.

“The bottom line is we value our nurses at our hospitals and have provided generous offers, and clearly from the crossover numbers we're seeing, the nurses know that,” Garner said.

Replacement Nurses.

Contracts for replacement RNs vary by hospital, with some lasting as long as five days. Eden spokeswoman Jonnie Banks said the contract for replacement nurses is five days, up from the three days during the last strike. “We're paying good money for it. That's part of the reason the contract is longer than the one before. People are not going to want to leave their home for a couple of days” during the holiday season to work one day, Banks said.

“Absolutely none” of the scheduled surgeries were canceled, Banks said. “It's business as usual, and we like to think it's quality health care here. There's been a lot of planning that has gone into this to make sure it's seamless.”

Staffing Issues.

Sutter disputed CNA's charges that nurses are not being relieved for meal and rest breaks due to insufficient RN coverage.

“All of our hospitals comply with California's nurse-to-patient staffing laws,” Garner said. “For the last several years, nearly all of the negotiating hospitals have had provisions in their contract for arbitration by a neutral third party for staffing, and CNA has never proposed to modify these arbitration provisions,” Garner said. “And despite their allegations, CNA has never even submitted a staffing dispute to arbitration under the many contracts under which CNA has that right.”

Idelson said nurses “try to resolve disputes without it going to the arbitration process because of how lengthy it is. But for them it's a fig leaf … they don't want to resolve the problem [but] wait six months to resolve a grievance rather than address a patient being in pain or not breathing.”

Sutter Health has nearly 60 locally negotiated contracts with 17 different labor unions, with a total of about 12,600 union-represented workers out of the 40,000 workers at its 26 hospitals, nine medical foundations, and visiting nurse and hospice units, Garner said.

By Joyce E. Cutler