Sutter nurses stage 1-day strike over staffing, pandemic readiness at California hospitals
Honking horns and the shouts of at least 200 registered nurses rang all the way to the front doors of Sutter Roseville Medical Center on Monday, though trees and a sea of parking lots kept the pickets a quarter-mile away and well out of eyesight.
More than Northern California 8,500 nurses and technicians protested at the Roseville hospital and 14 others operated by the Sacramento-based system, saying they have reached a standoff in contract negotiations over staffing and pandemic preparedness.
Renee Waters, an intensive care nurse at Sutter Roseville, said she would like to see the company stockpile personal protective equipment, provide pandemic training on an ongoing basis, and offer automatic workers’ compensation to nurses infected with a disease that widely afflicts the patient population they’re treating.
“The masks that we wear, that you were seeing me wear when you came up, these disappeared at one point,” Waters said. “We didn’t have anything, and when they did come back, it was locked up. You had to ask for it. It was rationed. We had to re-use our stuff. We had to do extended use.”
The one-day strike, organized by the California Nurses Association and its affiliate, Caregivers and Healthcare Employees Union, began at 7 a.m. and was slated to continue through 6:59 a.m. Tuesday. The walkout also includes nurses at the Sutter Center for Psychiatry in Sacramento and Sutter Auburn Faith Hospital. Nurses at the Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento, in midtown are not unionized.
Sutter leaders issued statements saying they “have scoured the global supply chain amid worldwide shortages to secure more than 165 million pieces of PPE, including masks, isolation gowns, and face shields, for patients and providers to maintain an adequate supply through surges.”
The nurses union wants the hospital to maintain a three-month supply of such equipment. Sutter did not say how many items it used last year or what its current supply is.
Tarrah Martine, a registered nurse at the Sutter Center for Psychiatry, 7700 Folsom Blvd. in Sacramento, said nurses at the facility are frequently being asked to pull a double shift of 16 hours and do not have enough relief nurses to ensure they get regular breaks.
“Our concern is that a staff that’s overworked has a hard time responding and maybe even assessing a patient because they’re so tired,” said Martine, trying to make herself heard over the maracas and shouts on the picket line. “We just don’t want our staff working under those conditions.”
In the company statement, Sutter leaders said they are hiring staff for both permanent and temporary positions and offering shift bonuses and competitive pay to recruit the best in the field.
“We staff according to clinical need and make every effort to maintain staffing at pre-pandemic ratios ...,” a company statement noted. “Sutter Health University tripled its capacity last year for training new graduate nurses and experienced nurses who have chosen to move into critical care and some specialties, the largest such training program in our footprint.”
The nurses have long had concerns about “presumptive eligibility” for workers compensation coverage, but now that they are treating survivors who have long-term disabilities from COVID-19, it has heightened their calls for parity with firefighters and other first responders who receive the benefit. It would mean nurses would automatically be presumed to have contracted the disease at work.
This “is so important, especially after this particular disease,” Waters said. “Look at the long COVID that’s happening. There are still things emerging. It’s not just getting over the initial symptoms, and if I had gotten something like that, it could affect me for the rest of my life.”
Hospitals and other health care companies have opposed this push, saying it is more likely that nurses contracted the disease in the community since patients are being screened for the disease and separated from the general population.
Sutter leaders said they are committed to a safe environment and have empowered staff to always speak up for safety.
The California Nurses Association represents about 1,900 nurses at the three local Sutter hospitals, and between the nurses’ union and the Caregivers and Healthcare Employees Union, more than 8,500 Sutter employees are represented in the current round of labor contract bargaining. The caregivers union does not have members striking in the Sacramento region.
The company and the two unions have been bargaining over a new contract since June 2021. Union leaders said the strike vote was nearly unanimous and that they provided the company with early notice of the strike.
This story was originally published April 18, 2022 at 10:18 AM with the headline "Sutter nurses stage 1-day strike over staffing, pandemic readiness at California hospitals."
