St. Vincent Nurses Strike Regrettably Reaches Seven-Months on Oct. 8th As Tenet Healthcare Continues to Deny Agreement to Ensure Safer Patient Care for a Community Hard Hit by Delta Variant

WORCESTER, Mass., Oct. 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On Friday Oct. 8^, the St. Vincent nurses strike will reach another unfortunate milestone in their struggle against Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, which began a full seven months earlier on March 8 in a last-ditch effort by the nurses to finally convince Tenet Healthcare, one of the most profitable corporations in America, to finally put their concern for patients ahead of their ravenous desire for profits. 

As the strike, now the longest nurses' strike in state history, reaches its seventh month, the support for the nurses' cause, and the ire against Tenet for its behavior continues to gather momentum within the region, the state and the nation

"The fact that we are still outside this hospital, the hospital we love and have served, some of us for 10, 20 even 40 years is a travesty and serves as an indictment of Tenet Healthcare and their unyielding desire for profit and power at the expense of the suffering of our patients and our community," said Marlena Pellegrino, RN, a longtime nurse at the hospital and co-chair of the nurses local bargaining unit of the Massachusetts Nurses Association. "Our nurses want nothing more than to be back at the bedside to provide our patients with the dignity and expert care they expect and deserve from this, their community hospital.  Unfortunately, Tenet has refused an agreement that would allow that to happen, choosing instead to spend millions to keep us out, to pursue illegal practices to punish us for our advocacy -- all to avoid accountability for providing safe patient care."

In the last two weeks, the nurses have been buoyed by a  growing chorus of voices coming from all sectors of the community, including two powerful letters from the unions -- UFCW 1445 and Teamsters Local 170 --  representing most of the caregivers still working inside St. Vincent Hospital who place the blame for poor conditions inside the hospital, and the crisis outside the hospital on Tenet, and fully support the nurses call for a return to the positions they held prior to the strike.  

Public officials have also weighed in, which included a powerful statement by State Representatives Mary Keefe and David LeBoeuf, where they wrote in part: "Worcester is in the midst of a public health crisis with a 'negative' number of hospital beds throughout the region…This lack of services during the height of resurge of the COVID-19 pandemic has put all of us in the community at risk. There are over 700 nurses on the picket line. Bringing them back to their jobs would solve this crisis that our community faces."

Also last week, Mayor Joe Petty and City Councilor and Chair of Public Health Sarai Rivera held a press conference supporting the St. Vincent nurses' position and calling out Tenet for their efforts to endanger the community, where the Mayor stated, "Tenet Healthcare is demanding that these nurses end this strike with no guarantee that they will retain their previous positions or a commitment that they can return to work without fear of retaliation. These demands are unprecedented and violate the standard practice in any and all strikes and the high labor standards that we expect from all employers in our city. The demand put upon them by the hospitals corporate owners is not only unjust, it is detrimental to the safe restoration of services for our community. I want Tenet to know that we will not allow Worcester to be a testing ground for the imposition of unprecedented labor practices that harm unions and all workers. And when it comes to our nurses, who have given so much to us for so many years, I want Tenet to know that we in Worcester believe that they are irreplaceable."

This week, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, which represents thousands of organized workers and serves as the voice for working families in Massachusetts sent a letter to policy makers calling out Tenet for the abusive treatment of  St. Vincent nurses and the need to return them to their original positions to end the nurses strike so they can resume caring for the communities they have served with skill and compassion for decades.

And on Tuesday, nurses who work at hospitals owned by Tenet Healthcare in California, Arizona and Texas, sent a letter to Tenet's CEO Saum Sutaria, as well as a number of legislators and policymakers in Massachusetts, decrying the for-profit company's actions during the historic strike, stating in part that they  "strongly condemn Tenet's continued disregard for the community and patients' health during this pandemic by failing to return striking St. Vincent nurses to work and ending the seven-month long strike. As fellow Tenet nurses, we have seen how Tenet leadership put profits over patients at our own hospital and we see they are making the same choice at St. Vincent. Their actions are now putting the community of Worcester at dire risk with the closing of beds and failing to reinstate striking nurses."

The nurses have also won praise from their colleagues working in hospitals across the region, who view them as heroes for their stand against Tenet's corporate greed and blatant abuse and the support they are providing to the community.  While the nurses are being kept out on the street by Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare and Tenet has closed beds and services needed by the community, many of the nurses have found or are seeking  work  at a number of facilities in the region in the hopes of minimizing the impact of the COVID crisis on their own communities while also sustaining their families until Tenet agrees to an equitable end to the dispute.  Many of the strikers are working  in a number of hospitals, including at both campuses of nearby UMass Memorial Medical Center, at both UMass Memorial HealthAlliance facilities in Clinton, and Leominster, at UMass Memorial Marlborough Hospital, at Milford Regional Medical Center, Harrington Hospital and Henry Heywood Hospital.  Other nurses are working in vaccination sites and some in local nursing homes. The skill, expertise and helping hands of these nurses are much appreciated by their colleagues throughout the region.

"We completely support the St. V's nurses. Their battle for safe staffing in order to provide safe care to their patients is a fight that belongs to all of us," said Diane Lane-Cormier, RN and co-chair of the nurses local bargaining unit at UMass Memorial HealthAlliance-Leominster Hospital. "We have had St, Vincent nurses coming in droves to help us out with our nursing shortage at HealthAlliance. They have been nothing but wonderful, caring nurses and we are pleased and grateful to be working side by side with them."

How We Got Here

The strike followed more than 18 months of negotiations and advocacy by the nurses to convince their CEO Carolyn Jackson that conditions for patients were patently unsafe and needed to be improved to protect their patients and stem the mass exodus of nurses, after more than 100 nurses left the facility largely due to the deplorable working conditions.  The strike followed a year of great sacrifice and courageous service by the nurses during the worst public health crisis in the nation's history, as they worked tirelessly to care for patients during the pandemic with inadequate staffing conditions and the required personal protective equipment (some nurses resorted to wearing trash bags after Tenet failed to provide appropriate protective gowns), resulting in hundreds of the nurses becoming infected with the virus themselves. 

Repeated appeals to improve conditions were ignored by Jackson and her leadership team, who responded to the crisis by furloughing staff, implementing daily staffing cuts, while the corporation bragged in the press of their plan to utilize billions in taxpayer pandemic funding to "maximize our cash position."  Over the course of the last two years, the nurses went to great lengths to convince Tenet to address the growing patient safety crisis, including:

• the nurses filed more than 1,000 official real time reports of unsafe conditions that threatened  the lives of their patients, with Tenet taking little or no action to address nurses' concerns;  
• the nurses signed and delivered a petition to Jackson in March of 2020 demanding safer patient care conditions;
• the following month, more than 200 nurses attended a meeting with the hospital's negotiating team providing harrowing testimony of unsafe conditions for patients on nearly every unit;
• in January of 2021 nurses began daily picketing outside the hospital to draw public attention to their cause, and finally;
• on February 10, 2021, the nurses cast an 89 percent vote in favor of the strike.  The same day, Tenet announced profits for the pandemic year of more than $400 million, profits made on the backs of their nurses and the suffering of their patients. 

"What is at stake in this situation is the ability of nurses to advocate for and to care for patients at the most vulnerable time in their lives," said Marie Ritacco, RN, a member of the nurses negotiating committee and vice president of the MNA. "CEOs come and go, but at the end of the day, nurses are the ones who answer the call light and make the split-second decisions that could save your life. Our union provides us with a protected voice which allows us to fight for you, particularly when a for-profit corporation is willing to sacrifice your safety, as Tenet has done, to boost their stock price for their shareholders. 

"We were the nurses in the room with patients gasping their last breaths, holding up an iPad or cell phone to say their final goodbyes to loved ones last year, not anyone wearing a suit from Tenet in Worcester or Dallas," Ritacco concluded. "We are appalled that they have chosen to deprive patients in this community the care they need, and they are now threatening us with the loss of our ability to care for you purely out of spite. It is beyond despicable."

More than 700 nurses joined the strike on March 8, and six months later, nearly 700 nurses are honoring the strike. While the nurses continue to walk the line, their cause has been followed and supported throughout the region, the state, the nation, and yes, the world, as nurses and labor/health care advocates from nearly every continent have lent moral and material support to the nurses' cause, seeing their struggle as a fight for humane health care delivery and workplace justice in the face of unmitigated corporate greed. From its inception, the nurses have won the support of nearly every member of the state's congressional and legislative delegations, from Attorney General Maura Healey, the Mayor of Worcester and the entire Worcester City Council.  These officials have sent multiple letters, passed resolutions and made multiple calls to Tenet urging them, to provide what the nurses are asking for. The nurses have also won vast community support, with multiple faith leaders and community activists holding rallies, marches and no less than four prayer vigils with the nurses outside the hospital. More than 10,000 "I support the St. Vincent Nurses" lawn signs have been distributed and are showing up outside homes and  businesses from Cape Cod to Pittsfield, and several thousand community postcards have been signed and mailed to Tenet's CEO in Worcester and in Dallas from community members.

"As difficult as this has been for all of us, we take enormous comfort from the support we have received and continue to receive from all sectors of our local community and from around the world," said Dominique Muldoon, RN, another longtime nurse at the hospital and co-chair of the nurses local bargaining unit. "No matter what lies and misinformation our CEO puts out, the public understands the core message of our strike, as shown on one of our signs, which is 'if nurses are out here, there is something wrong in there.' The public understands the key role we play in their care, particularly after what we all went through last year, and they know we doing this not for personal gain, but to keep them safe."

As the strike continues, the nurses continue their effort to hold Tenet accountable for their actions and have filed a total of nine  unfair labor practices against the corporations for their actions prior to and throughout the strike including making unlawful threats against striking nurses, retaliation and discrimination towards striking nurses, promises of benefits to non-strikers, and bad faith bargaining tactics, all designed to break the strike and to remove MNA as the nurses' bargaining agent. This conduct has greatly disturbed the nurses, who are now demanding that any return-to-work agreement must also include resolution of the unfair labor practices and the conduct underlying them.

The announcement of the charges follows  a scathing news report detailing heart-wrenching stories by patients and staff inside the hospital about deplorable patient care conditions and the lack of safe and compassionate care being provided by the replacement nurses hired by Tenet to work during the strike. 

Tenet's propensity for questionable and unlawful behavior is well documented, as the corporation has been subject to fines and other judgements from courts and governmental agencies totaling more than $1.8 billion over the last 20 years alone. A listing of those decisions can be found here.  This includes the award in February of $10.6 million to two cardiologists at Tenet-owned Detroit Medical Center after a federal judge upheld an arbitrators' decision that the hospital and Tenet acted with malice in firing them as retaliation for reporting violations at the facility.  Four nurses at a Tenet facility in June of 2020 have also filed $25 million lawsuit against Tenet for alleged wrongful discharge, retaliation against whistleblowers, and intentional and/or reckless infliction of emotional distress, after the nurses reported preventable patient deaths in their emergency department due to understaffing during the height of the COVID crisis.  And in February of 2020, Tenet and one of its California hospitals agreed to pay $1.41 million to settle false claims allegations brought by the federal government for knowingly charging Medicare for implanting unnecessary cardiac monitors into patients.

Agreement Scuttled Last Month Over Back to Work Provision and Tenet Unfair Labor Practices

Two months ago the nurses had agreed to staffing improvements negotiated throughout the strike and were ready to return to work to provide care, particularly during the current surge caused by the Delta variant, yet a final agreement was scuttled by Tenet when they demanded the nurses accept an unprecedented and punitive back to work provision that is not only unfair to nurses, but its replacement of highly skilled nurses with lesser qualified staff, would undermine all the patient safety gains the parties had negotiated. The hospital's proposal also called for the nurses to retract all the unfair labor practice charges, opening the door for Tenet to continue its efforts to retaliate against the striking nurses. The nurses are clear that any negotiated Return to Work Agreement must also include a negotiated resolution of all the unfair labor practice charges the nurses have filed.

"We went on strike to achieve safer patient care and can't go back as long as the hospital's dangerous return to work agreement denies our most fragile patients the experienced, expert care they deserve," said Muldoon. "Our members are clear. They are ready to end the strike to provide care once again, but not unless all nurses are returned to their jobs and can do so without fear of abuse because a for profit corporation decided to retaliate against nurses who have been advocating for safer conditions inside our hospital."

"This was a callous demand at the 11^th hour by our CEO in blatant retaliation against the nurses with only one goal, to punish the nurses for our strike, to break our union and thereby silence our voice as advocates for our patients and our community," said Pellegrino. "This is yet another example of what our nurses have faced for more than two years, why our nurses cast a vote of no confidence against our CEO during the height of the pandemic in May 2020, and why we went on strike and stayed out on strike all this time."

Without an agreement, the strike will continue as the nurses continue to work with the federal mediators and the National Labor Relations to find a way to move the process to a just resolution.

For more background on the strike and the issues involved, click here to learn more.   

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Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its 23,000 members advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.

SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association

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