Contract Campaign Committee

The Contract Campaign Committee (CCC) now has members on every unit in Lenox Hill Hospital. CCC members are engaging their coworkers in setting contract priorities. The committee members will now meet by clinical division in order to come to a broader consensus. Make sure that your voice is heard. Tell your contract campaign committee representative what you think needs to be in the new contract. Click here for a list of CCC members.

Contract Compliance

After your overwhelming vote to authorize a 10- day notice for informational picketing, conditions in the hospital improved for most units. As a result of this improvement, the delegates voted to postpone the 10-day notice. Shortly after that delegate meeting, there was a sudden surge in patient census and conditions started to deteriorate. On July 12th the Union met with the Hospital administration to present the staffing violations and incidents of abusive supervisory behavior that you had brought to our attention. As a result of this meeting, Phyllis Yezzo put out a memo to the nursing staff explaining that there was a citywide surge in patient census and the Hospital is committed to providing the supplemental staff necessary to meet the increased demand.

To address the immediate staffing problem, the Hospital is now working with 12 agencies to provide supplemental staff. In addition, 12 per diem nurses have been hired. The Hospital is also aggressively recruiting to fill all vacancies. Twelve full-time nurses and 10 nursing assistants began orientation on July 10th.

As for the settlement agreement on monitor RNs, 7 Lachman now has a monitor nurse and 9 East/9 Lachman will have one shortly. The monitor RN for 7 Lachman and 7

East is in addition to the charge nurse on ICU. We have also made it clear to nursing management that the monitor nurse for 9 Lachman does not substitute for having a charge nurse on 9 East. On 5 Lachman the total staffing needs remain unclear because of the lack of criteria to distinguish between intermediate and telemetry patients. A staff committee has been constituted to develop criteria. We hope that the establishment of such criteria will help us to resolve the monitor issue on that unit. If the settlement agreement is not properly implemented on any unit, we will proceed with the arbitration.

Every member acts as the eyes and ears of the Union. Please continue to monitor the hospital’s progress in meeting our demands:

• Maintaining contractual RN staffing levels,
• Hiring additional nursing attendants, and
• Implementing our signed agreements.

Contact a delegate or contract campaign committee member with information and keep sending those documentation forms to the Union office.

Remember, the contract does not enforce itself. Our contract is our bond. We owe it to each other to make sure that it is enforced:

• Do not take report on patients above your ratio unless you have extra help from support staff, management and/or supplemental RN staff;
• Do not send patients to nurses at their ratio;
• Submit overtime slips for all overtime worked; and
• Give the nursing office notice when there are not enough nurses coming on the next shift to care for the current patient census.

Progressive Discipline

The hospital has unilaterally eliminated two steps in the disciplinary process. Since this affects all LHH/MEETH employees, NYPNU and 1199 are collaborating in our efforts to fight this policy.