ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The union representing close to 900 nurses and allied professionals at Rochester General hospital says its members are ready to walk-off the job if the hospital refuses to meet their demands.
Thursday, nurses are voting to authorize a strike.
News10NBC’s Patrick Moussignac has the details.
“We want to avoid a strike is the number one goal. The nurses are willing to walk, but we want to continue bargaining,” says nurse Phoebe Sheehan.
Sheehan is a registered nurse at Rochester General Hospital. On Thursday, she and hundreds of other nurses are voting on whether to go on strike as early as next month.
“Our hope is that the hospital will continue to work with us to get up their contract,” Sheenan explains. “We’ve been at the bargaining table since October, and we’ve made it very clear to the administration that safe staffing is our number one priority.”
The North East Nurses Association is backing the nurses claims of safe staff ratios, and the effects on quality patient care.
“Nurses in the emergency department are frequently backed up, forced to take care of 20 patients at a time. In the in-patient units sometimes they’re up to 10 patients at a time which is just literally not safe,” says organizer of the North East Nurses Association, Nate Miller.
Nurses explain why this vote is so important to them.
“It gives all of us nurses a voice at the hospital a way to stand up for safe patient staffing, and anything else,” says nurse Savanah Vasile.
“I really want to have a good contract — a good, fair contract and I want it to be fair for everyone, but especially for the patients of course, yeah,” explains nurse Lisa Coulombe.
If the nurses do vote to go on strike, they won’t do so right away.
“In health care we have to give legally a 10-day notice to the hospital, and that allows the hospital to create a contingency plan that makes sure the patients are taken cared of if nurses do end up taking strike,” says Sheenan.
Rochester General Hospital sent News10NBC the following statement:
“It is very disappointing that RUNAP seems determined to threaten a strike – despite the progress we are making at the bargaining table – and Rochester General Hospital’s (RGH) efforts to do everything it can to reach an agreement, including multiple wage proposals without seeing substantive movement from the union, safe staffing proposals and more.
A strike could be bad for everyone: our nurses, our patients, our community, and RGH. Our nurses are essential to our ability to provide the highest quality care, and we are grateful for their commitment to their patients and to RGH. RGH does not want a strike and will continue to bargain in good faith to avoid one. We believe contract issues are best settled at the bargaining table and we remain committed to transparent and collaborative negotiations to reach a fair contract.
Strikes are tools that unions use when negotiations are stuck or when management isn’t focused on reaching a deal. Neither of those are the case here.
For background, both parties have participated in 14 bargaining sessions from October 12, 2022, through July 19, 2023, and Federal Mediators were present at the two most recent sessions. Throughout the negotiations, RGH has responded to and discussed RUNAP’s proposals at the bargaining table, reaching tentative agreements on a variety of topics. We hope that RUNAP will continue negotiations on the open issues on the table instead of conducting a strike.
Even the threat of a strike causes the health system to spend significant sums of money to prepare for the possibility of a strike and ensure we can continue to treat our patients and serve the Rochester community. Those funds would be better spent on our nurses, other employees and serving the community.”
Voting ends Thursday at 9 p.m. and results will be counted immediately after. We’ll have those results for you as soon as we get them.
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