Emergency Membership Meeting

NYPNU held an emergency membership meeting on June 7th at which members overwhelmingly voted to authorize the NYPNU leadership to give the Hospital a 10-day notice for an informational picket. The issues driving the union to take this action include: consistently dangerous staffing levels often in violation of the contractual ratios, insufficient support staff, the Hospital’s refusal to comply with the mediated settlement agreement signed on December 13, 2005 requiring monitor RNs on all telemetry units, repeated floating of the ICU charge RN, abusive management, the disciplining of several NYPNU RNs without just cause, inadequate supplies, and broken equipment. In short, we have attempted to maintain a high level of patient care without the staff, supplies, equipment and management support necessary to do the job.

The decision as to whether to issue the notice and when was left to the discretion of the Delegate Assembly. The delegates will meet to discuss the matter on July 5th, and the decision will be based on the Hospital’s compliance with the following demands: correcting RN staffing levels by hiring more regular staff, per diems and other supplemental RN staff, hiring additional nursing attendants, and implementing our signed agreements.

Until the Hospital is adequately staffed, we are demanding that managers take patient assignments when necessary to maintain our contractual ratios and avoid mandatory overtime. In order to enforce the contract during this time, we ask that you:

• Do not take report on patients above your ratio;
• Do not send patients to nurses at their ratio;
• Give the nursing office notice when there are not enough nurses coming on the next shift to care for the current patient census.

We have already seen some positive changes. More managers are taking patient assignments. Twenty-two staff RN positions were posted in the June 18th Pink Sheet. The 3 Wollman staff RNs have been recalled. The Hospital will no longer use 5 Wollman as an overflow unit. Twenty-two agency RNs recently went through orientation, and five travelers have been hired.

On the other hand, some ADNs are still threatening to report nurses for abandonment if they refuse to take patients above their ratio. This is despite the fact that a nurse cannot be charged with abandonment if she/he has not assumed responsibility for a particular patient by taking report. We must continue to monitor compliance, and we need your help. Please let a delegate or contract campaign committee member know what is happening on your unit. If you have trouble reaching a union representative, do not hesitate to call the Union office.

Contract Campaign Committee (CCC)

CCC members are now meeting with Beth Pease, our new Contract Campaign Coordinator, to initiate the process of establishing unit-based contract priorities. In July representatives from each unit will come together in Division-wide meetings to consolidate that information. The CCC will then meet with the delegates in August to determine the union’s overall contract priorities. The more dialogue that union members have with each other, the better this process will work. The objective is to address the needs of the membership, not merely to tally up the desires of individuals. In order to do that, we must invest the time in talking to one another.

Discipline without Just Cause

The delegates voted to take two discipline cases to arbitration. One involves the wrongful termination of a 9 Uris RN who was an LHH employee for 19 years and was fired less than a year and a half from his planned retirement date. In the other case, an RN was suspended for allegedly speaking too loudly to fellow employees in a patient care area.