Contract Compliance & Employee Satisfaction

We are alarmed at the Hospital’s complete and utter disregard for our contract. We file grievance after grievance in an effort to compel them to comply with their contractual commitments and are met either with an acknowledgment of their failure without resolution or a professed ignorance of the plain meaning of the English language.

There has been a troubling increase in involuntary overtime. Staffing is so poor that on some units there is no relief RN to report off to at the end of our shifts. The Union considers this to be mandatory overtime, which is prohibited in the contract. The Hospital has an obligation to honor the contract and provide staff in sufficient numbers to ensure safe patient care. This mandatory overtime is unsafe, a violation of the contract, an abuse of our professionalism and an abdication of management’s responsibility to adequately staff the Hospital.

Our ratios are consistently violated throughout the institution. Managers unfairly criticize our members for reporting this dangerous under-staffing to the administration (believing, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, that they will do something about it). When our members beg to be relieved after already working two hours beyond the end of their shift, they are met with supervisors who say, “Not my problem.” We lack the support staff and the equipment necessary to do our jobs properly. Our settlement agreements are ignored. Our members are subject to disproportionate and unjust discipline up to and including termination without cause. Our Union representative is denied free access to the Hospital in violation of past practice.

Now the Hospital has entered into a contract with the Studer group to improve Hospital performance and patient satisfaction. The Studer group’s basic premise is that patient satisfaction is contingent on employee satisfaction. Given the level of employee dissatisfaction in this institution, the Studer group is confronted with a mighty task indeed. If management is genuinely interested in improving employee satisfaction, we suggest that they try adhering to the collective bargaining agreement. If they need to pay the Studer group to tell them this, then we welcome them. In the meantime, we will continue to file grievances, go to arbitration and pursue all other legal recourse to compel the Hospital to comply with the contract until it finally expires in October.

Contract Campaign Committee

We would like to extend a warm welcome to the NYPNU members who agreed to serve on the Contract Campaign Committee. We now have over 50 committee members in addition to current delegates. This is an important

opportunity to review critical issues and collectively develop contract demands to address them. To ensure that your unit’s needs are addressed, we are asking each unit to provide 2 representatives to the committee. Representatives are still needed on 7 Lachman, 7 Wollman, 8 Uris, 8 Wollman, the OR and Radiology. Campaign committee members will work with a Contract Campaign Coordinator whom the Union is in the process of hiring and will meet by clinical division in June. Please contact a delegate or the union office if you are interested in representing your unit on the committee.

Grievances and Unit Issues

• The Union and the Hospital signed a settlement agreement in December 2005 in which the Hospital committed to immediately add a monitor nurse to all telemetry units with existing monitor banks. Despite this agreement, the Hospital has failed to provide the additional staff. We will now go to arbitration to enforce the settlement agreement.
• A class action grievance has been filed on behalf of the 4 East/4 Lachman nurses regarding nurse/patient ratios, an inability to take breaks, lack of supplies and broken equipment. On a unit with 28 beds, there are some nights when only 2 RNs are on the schedule. Usually there are 3 RNs, and the Hospital tries to provide a 4th RN through supplementation.
• After the 9 Uris staff collected substantial documentation of persistent ratio violations, the Union filed a class action grievance on their behalf. Although the ratio for orthopedic patients is 1:7, 9 Uris RNs are frequently required to take 8 or 9 patients, especially on nights.
• The Union filed a class action grievance on behalf of the ICU staff regarding ratio violations, excessive floating and the consistent lack of a charge RN. Two to three nurses are floated per shift generally leaving the unit with no charge RN who can relieve for breaks. This results in ratio violations for at least 10.5 hours/day. In a tremendous showing of solidarity, 13 staff RNs attended the grievance hearing on May 18th. Management attributed the excessive floating to the hospital-wide hiring freeze. Since the hiring freeze is now over, nursing management can commence hiring on understaffed units. The Hospital also agreed that a charge nurse with no patient assignment is needed in the ICU.

Political Action

The Working Families Party State Convention will be on June 3rd in Albany. Come together with union members from across the state to endorse candidates for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General and US Senate. Please notify the NYPNU office if you are interested in attending.