DREXEL HILL, Pa. (CBS) — Hospital officials say Delaware County
Memorial Hospital is open and ready for patients despite all 370 nurses and
technicians walking off the job at 6:45 a.m. Sunday over “unfair labor
practices.”
Officials say the contingency plan includes licensed and
experienced caregivers ready to serve patients.
The nurses plan to continue picketing outside the
hospital until 7:30 p.m. Sunday and end the strike Monday. Nurses say they’ve
been forced to do more with less after California-based Prospect Medical
Holdings acquired the hospital in July 2016.
Hospital officials say because staffing agencies require
five days of pay to get temporary replacements, the work stoppage is expected
to continue until Friday.
“We used to have five patients to one nurse on the
floors. Now they’re giving us up to seven and eight. They’ve also cut our
nurses aides. We used to have two for 20; now we have one for 20,” said Angela
Neopolitano, a 36-year veteran ICU nurse at the hospital.
Both sides say it’s regrettable it had to come to this
after failed negotiations over 21 meetings in the last year. Hospital and union
officials reportedly tried to strike a last-minute deal on Friday, which also
failed.
Many of the nurses on strike have spent their careers at
Delaware County Memorial Hospital and say they’ve been forced to strike out of
concern for the patients. They apologized to those patients for walking off the
job, a short-term loss that they hope will lead to long-term improvements.
Meantime, in a statement to Eyewitness News, a hospital
spokesman wrote in part, “We regret that PASNAP has been unwilling to agree to
a reasonable settlement and has now called upon its members to abandon patients
at the bedside in an attempt to wrest even higher wages and benefits from the
hospital.”
The spokesman adds that the nurses here are paid fairly —
with the highest salary over $160,000. But the nurses on strike say this is not
about money but about safe staffing.
Source: CBS
Philly
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