In our Bargaining Team’s first day of face-to-face negotiations, Providence management asked for our “flexibility” in order to allow them to run the hospital. They said they will be asking us to make changes in our contract that we will not like, some of which we will find “unpalatable.”
“We’ve had a Union together at Tarzana since the 1980s and we’ve fought hard over the years for the standards included in our contract,” says Karen McDaniel, RN, Bargaining Team member. “As a result, most of the articles we put across the table so far are ‘no change’ proposals.” Our contract has been used as a model for many of the 121RN unions throughout the LA-area.
This year we will address specific concerns that our members have raised — for instance, health and safety, scheduling, in-house registry and call-off. These issues will be addressed before our economic concerns. Our team already introduced articles on safe patient handling and 24-hour notification of employees who have been exposed to communicable diseases such as TB.
Because of our strong contract, our nurses and professionals are long-term employees with a lot invested in Tarzana. This is just the beginning, but we promise not to lower OUR standards. And we need all of our members to stand with us!
“Our nursing standards at the bedside are not going down and we will not allow patient or nurse standards in our contract to go down. We don’t deserve to take less.” Sue Stephens, RN, NICU
“One of our proposals is for the hospital to provide a safe patient handling policy. I recently was injured due to lifting and repositioning a patient and I have not been able to work at the bedside. This happens to way too many nurses.” Sheila Harry, RN, Float