![]() While these well-paid functionaries spoke of how they support workers, nurses should look at the actual record of these organizations to determine whether they are acting in the interests of workers. While the union released statements decrying the lockout by Ascension, none of the news reports indicated that it had released strike funds to reimburse the nurses for the pay that they lost during the lockout.Ī rally in Austin on the day of the strike was dominated by union representatives and Democratic Party figures. The union, however, called the strike simply to allow the nurses to blow off some steam. Last fall, the Austin nurses overwhelmingly voted to affiliate with National Nurses United (NNU). There are, however, no federal government regulations regarding the number of patients a registered nurse can care for at one time in a hospital. Still another study estimated that adding 133,000 RN’s to hospitals would result in overall savings of over $6 billion per year. One study has shown that if all hospitals in the country increased their staffing levels to preferred levels, 5,000 in-hospital patient deaths and 60,000 adverse patient outcomes could be avoided every year. For each additional patient in an RN’s workload above the preferred nurse-to-patient ratio of 1:4, the likelihood of patient death increases by 7 percent. In fact, studies have shown that when nurses have to care for too many patients, the patients are at greater risk of preventable medical errors, avoidable complications, injuries from falls, bed sores, increased length of stay in hospitals, and readmissions. Nurses complained about having to care for as many as eight patients per shift, when the maximum they should ever have to care for is no more than six. They described unclean workplaces and having to put up with violent patients and hospital visitors. Some nurses told of situations in which they had to choose which patients received care and which ones did not. One nurse described the labor and delivery unit as “very unsafe.” Others described situations in which they have had to rush between births, some involving fetuses with serious medical issues, without any break. The main demand cited by nurses was for increased staffing. In social media posts and news interviews, they displayed a willingness to fight and solidarity with their coworkers. When the nurses attempted to return to work the next day, armed guards physically prevented them from entering the hospital. Clearly, though, a corporation as large as Ascension could have dictated the terms of the contract it signed, which, in fact, it did. The hospital claimed that it was required to honor a four-day contract it had signed with the temporary agency that supplied replacement nurses during the strike. Nurses at two Ascension facilities in Wichita, Kansas, also went out on strike, to bring the total number of nurses on strike to about 2,000.įollowing the action, in a move solely intended to intimidate the nurses, Ascension locked out the nurses in Texas and Kansas for three days. On June 27, approximately 900 nurses at Ascension Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas went on a one-day strike, the largest nurses strike in Texas history. Ascension nurses picket in Wichita, Kansas
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