WORCESTER – Saint Vincent Hospital will unilaterally implement its last offer to the Massachusetts Nursing Association [MNA], made in August, although there is no agreement between the two sides.
The Hospital says unilaterally implementing its offer is within its rights under federal labor law. It also says its last offer includes “extensive investments in nurse staffing, added workplace safety measures, reduced out-of-pocket healthcare expenses, and raises of up to 35 percent for some nurses.”
The hospital will implement the measures for Sunday, Oct. 17.
The MNA says it believes the hospital’s issues an illegal declaration of impasse and filed a charge of unfair labor practices with the National Labor Relations Board [NRLB]. It says it is the eleventh charge it has filed during the strike against Saint Vincent Hospital.
The MNA and Tenet Healthcare, the Dallas-based company the owns and operates Saint Vincent Hospital, agreed to resolve staffing level issues, the primary concern stated by nurses for the strike, in August. Return-to-work provisions for the striking nurses remain unresolved. The strike began over seven months ago, in March.
MNA says that nurses should be able to return to the same jobs they had before the strike began, which is a common practice when strikes end.
The Hospital says those agreements are typical when strikes last days or weeks, not months. Any striking nurse who wishes to return to work will have a job, according to the hospital, but it will not displace permanent replacement nurses it hired during the strike by returning nurses to their pre-strike shifts and assignments.
Within the statement released by Saint Vincent Hospital, its CEO, Carolyn Jackson, says, “The MNA called this strike over staffing,” and that, “They made staffing allegations linked to false claims about patient safety concerns.” She also says that, “We believe that nurses deserve the generous increases and staffing changes that are reflected in our final offer.”
The full passage from Jackson is below:
“The MNA called this strike over staffing. They made staffing allegations linked to false claims about patient safety concerns, which could never be proven with any facts. The MNA has accepted the staffing levels in the hospital’s final offer, and staffing is no longer an issue in negotiations. Instead, the union is holding up an agreement to return hundreds of nurses back to work over a small number of nurses who may have to return to jobs that are different from their exact pre-strike positions. We believe that nurses deserve the generous increases and staffing changes that are reflected in our final offer, and therefore we are exercising our right to implement these terms.”
According to information from the NRLB, Saint Vincent Hospital has 10 charges filed against it in 2021. Six of those remain open. The NRLB does not provide the entity which issued the charge in its data.
The most recent charge the MNA says it filed on Friday was not in public data from the NRLB over the weekend.
