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Nurses to launch longest strike yet
10-day walkout targets eight hospitals
Thousands of registered nurses around the Bay - including as many as 700 on the Peninsula - are expected to walk off their jobs Friday and begin a 10-day strike at eight Bay Area hospitals affiliated with Sutter Health.The walkout will affect two health facilities in San Mateo County: Peninsula Medical Center in Burlingame and Mills Health Center in San Mateo, both of which are operated by Mills-Peninsula Health Services.
Other hospitals affected include St. Luke's Hospital and California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco; Alta Bates Summit medical centers in Oakland and Berkeley; San Leandro Hospital; Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley; Sutter Delta Medical Center in Antioch; and Sutter Solano Medical Center in Vallejo.
Mills-Peninsula officials will bring in replacement nurses and maintain it will be business as usual at the two facilities. They were both kept open with replacement nurses during two previous two-day strikes by the nurses in October and December.
Roughly 4,000 nurses represented by the California Nurses Association union will be affected by the strike. The nurses say ongoing problems with patient care, understaffing, and their own health care and retirement benefits are at issue.
"I see no way this strike will not go forward," said Shum Preston, spokesman for the nurses association. "Sutter Health has not taken the nurses' concerns seriously."
Union and management representatives have not been able to reach an agreement since contract negotiations began in May. No new negotiations have been scheduled.
Officials at Sutter Health, a nonprofit network of hospitals and doctors' groups, insist that the real issue for the nurses association has to do with union-organizing rights.
"We are prepared for the strike on Friday," said Debbie Goodin, Mills-Peninsula's vice president of human resources. "It doesn't appear that the CNA has any intention of stepping back from its political agenda to focus on local nurses and a commitment to our patients."
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