As many as 2,000 nurses who work in one of the city’s largest hospitals are expected to begin a strike Thursday, May 22, protesting what they describe as unsafe work conditions and generally inadequate staffing.
Registered nurses, nurse practitioners and nurse educators at MemorialCare’s Long Beach Medical Center and Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital will participate, including those who work in emergency rooms, intensive care units and the children’s clinic, according to the California Nurses Association, which represents the nurses.
They will picket outside of the hospital and hold a demonstration at 7 a.m. on May 22, a union spokesperson said. They are anticipated to strike for a full 24 hours, ending Friday at 6:59 a.m., though union organizers said they expect the hospital to lock all strikers out for five days.
Some are designated on the hospital’s “patient safety task force” and might be tapped by hospital administrators during the protest in case they need to deliver emergency care.
“We’ll do the job that’s necessary to keep the public and our patients safe,” said Brandy Welch, a pediatrics nurse at the hospital and a lead organizer on the bargaining team. “And when the job is done, the employer will have us go back down to the strike line.”
Meanwhile, hospital administrators have already begun hiring temporary replacement nurses and rescheduling patients’ appointments and surgeries. They have not yet determined how many they will hire, a MemorialCare spokesperson said Saturday.
“Long Beach residents can be assured that the union’s decision to strike will in no way compromise our hospitals’ ability or commitment to serve the essential health care needs of the community,” said Stephanie Garcia, the hospital system’s Vice President of Operations, adding that during the strike they will offer emergency and critical care services but will avoid scheduling non-emergency surgeries or medical interventions.
Notice of the planned strike — forwarded to the hospital on May 8 — comes after months of failed negotiations between the nurses’ union and bargainers with MemorialCare.
The nurses’ labor contract, which expired on March 31, has since been the subject of 15 bargaining sessions between the two parties since February. Following a 30-day bargaining period and 60-day notice of expiration, the contract reached total exhaustion on May 7.
Hospital officials, in response, offered to continue negotiations through June on the condition that the union withdraw the strike. In a news release Friday, administrators insisted they negotiated in good faith with the union over the past four months.
“We look forward to resuming negotiations with the union after the strike concludes,” said Garcia.
They noted in the news release that past negotiations ran, respectively, up to 21 and 42 bargaining sessions before they struck a deal. Neither led to a strike, they said.
“We are extremely disappointed that union leadership has prematurely chosen this course of action,” Garcia said. “We continue to believe that the best way for our dedicated nurses to reach a fair, financially responsible contract is at the bargaining table and not on the picket line.”
But the union says that conditions at the hospital demand this course of action.
Organizers describe dangerous work conditions whereby people have brought firearms and knives into the hospital, threatening or attacking patients and staff. Welch said there is currently only one public access area in the hospital — the emergency department — that uses a metal detector.
“We have had weapons come into the medical center undetected. We have had verbal and assaultive behavior to staff and to patients,” Welch said. In response, workers have requested more metal detectors at six additional public entrances.
There is also the matter of layoffs, Welch continued. While staffing meets the technical definition of patient-to-nurse ratios as determined by state law, that rule does not account for a patient’s “acuity” or severity of their illness, she said.
Multiple patients with severe illness can leave a nursing crew overwhelmed. “They have a staffing matrix, and we have the staffing to the acuity, and that often does not match,” Welch said.
Yet instead of hiring more nurses, the hospital has laid them off.
This comes a week after MemorialCare announced 115 layoffs — their third round of jobs cuts in 16 months — and the closure of their children’s pharmacy. These layoffs take effect on July 1.
The hospital previously laid off 60 people in March from the campus’ outpatient pharmacies and medical records departments. These cuts took effect in late April.
Hospital administrators say the cuts stem from a $40 million shortfall, forcing them to consolidate at its children’s hospital, streamline its outpatient children’s village and close its blood center.
Union officials said the strike was voted on after the most recent round of layoffs on May 2. This decision was made, they said, without declaration of an impasse, emblematic of their mounting frustrations with negotiations.
“This broke our hearts,” Welch said. “Because these nurses are critical to our Long Beach community. We expect our hospital leadership to share our commitment to quality patient care.”