Telegram & Gazette Staff
Where do current negotiations stand?
On Monday, seven weeks after nurses at St. Vincent Hospital went on strike, representatives of both sides were due to return to the negotiating table.
Contract talks have been at a stalemate, with each side saying the next move is in the hands of the other.
But both sides, the Massachusetts Nurses Association and Tenet Healthcare, owner of St. Vincent Hospital, agreed to continue negotations Monday.
Why are nurses on strike?
Nurses represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, are mainly advocating for a 1-to-4 ratio of nurses to patients on medical/surgical floors and telemetry units, in most cases, with a resource nurse to pitch in; increased staffing in the emergency department; and ancillary support in each unit.
Tenet Healthcare management and striking nurses at a Massachusetts hospital are scheduled to head back to the negotiating table Monday in an effort to end.
Striking nurses, management to resume negotiations
April 26, 2021
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WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) Nurses and management at a Massachusetts hospital are scheduled to head back to the negotiating table on Monday in an effort to end a nearly two-month strike stemming from a dispute over staffing levels.
Negotiations between nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester and the hospital s owner, Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, will resume 3 p.m. The bargaining session was set up by a federal mediator.
About 800 nurses at the hospital walked off the job on March 8.
St. Vincent nurses say they are required to care for five patients at a time, a difficult task with COVID-19 precautions and care requirements, while other hospitals have a limit of four patients per nurse.
If we re making some headway, we will go around the clock, he said.
Rhiana Sherwood, a spokesperson for the hospital, said there s no time frame for the session and she wasn t aware of what Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, which owns St. Vincent, might offer. The bottom line is there s always hope, Sherwood said.
St. Vincent CEO Carolyn Jackson said recently that Tenet has been ready to resume negotiations since April 7 in an effort to end the strike, which sent about 600 of the facility s 800 nurses to the picket line.
Since the strike started on March 8, replacement nurses have been assisting the nurses who crossed the picket line with patient care.
For more than a month and a half, Saint Vincent Hospital’s administration and hundreds of nurses have been locked in a tense strike over staffing levels.
The standoff comes at a crossroads time for unions: their number of members has been on a steady decline for decades, and a high-profile unionization vote among Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama was voted down in early April.
At the same time, unions have gained strength at two other healthcare spots in Central Massachusetts: UMass Medical School in Worcester and Milford Regional Medical Center. The federal government has two strong union backers in President Joe Biden and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, the former Boston mayor.