Long
Beach Memorial nurses strike
By
Kari Schneider
On-line Forty-Niner
Shouts
of “we want to work” and “the patients need
us” rang outside Long Beach Memorial Hospital
Thursday morning as about 100 nurses who
were on strike tried to return to work after
a one-day walk out.
 Going
back to work was not easy, however, because
security officers kept the nurses out.
Because of the strike, many Cal State
Long Beach nursing students have been pulled
from their hands-on learning at Long Beach
Memorial Hospital.
“If we would have had to go to Memorial
on Wednesday, we would have had to cross
picket lines and that would have made us
uncomfortable,” said Maureen Hernandez,
a senior nursing student. “It was the day
we were supposed to pick our patients and
the nurses they brought in would have had
to observe what we were doing on top of
being oriented to the hospital.”
Loucine Huckabay, director of the department
of nursing, also showed concern about students’
safety.
“Our nursing faculty did not feel safe in
assigning students to complete strangers,”
she said. “We are providing our students
alternate learning experiences at the university
in our stimulated lab until the strike resolves.”
Unresolved talks over the issue of pension
plans forced the nurses on Wednesday to
plan one of the largest nursing strikes
in Southern California.
The California Nurses Association and the
hospital reached a deadlock on Oct. 17 when
the hospital did not accept the nurses union’s
ambition to commit to the future. No date
has been set for renegotiations as of Thursday.
According to the association’s Web site,
the nurses are seeking to reverse an alarming
turnover — 47 percent of nurses have less
than five years of service at Long Beach
Memorial Hospital.
The issues they want addressed are a secure
pension plan, compensation for career nurses,
and forcible, safe, staffing protection.
The nurses are seeking a plan that would
pay them a specific amount when they retire,
calculated by how much they are paid and
the number of years at the hospital.
Thousands of nurses across the state have
already won these benefits recently at C.N.A.-represented
hospitals.
“The hospital is bringing in ‘float nurses’
from outside at a tremendous cost,” Huckabay
said. “These nurses do not know our nurses.”
An article in the Long Beach Press-Telegram
stated that Long Beach Memorial Hospital
prepared for the strike by replacing the
striking nurses with 400 nurses contracted
through the U.S. Nursing Corporation, a
firm that provides trained medical staff
at hospitals across the country during strikes.
The U.S. Nursing’s contract required Long
Beach Memorial to pay its nurses $40 an
hour for 4 days, so the hospital’s nurses
would be locked out until this morning.
“I hope it will be quick and both sides
will feel a win-win achievement,” Huckabay
said. “That way it will create a much better
learning experience for our nursing students
and better working conditions for the nurses.”
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