Final Round Of Talks Planned Ahead Of Nurses' Strike

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By Rick Saia

The Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) and UMass Memorial Medical Center will meet for a final round of talks at 2 p.m. today, ahead of a planned strike scheduled to begin Thursday morning.

The MNA, which represents UMass nurses, announced the talks Wednesday morning. They will take place between 2 and 6 p.m. at the DCU Center, the MNA said.

If the talks fail, more than 1,000 registered nurses at the University campus of UMass Memorial Medical Center will stage a one-day strike Thursday after contract talks between the health care system and the nurses union failed to result in a settlement.

The decision to strike - scheduled to begin at 6 a.m. Thursday and end at 6 a.m. Friday - followed a failed round of talks Tuesday with a federal mediator. Each side has blamed the other for the impasse.

In a statement provided by UMass Memorial on Monday, its president and CEO, Eric Dickson, said the union presented a contract proposal that exceeded the terms that nurses at the Memorial and Hahnemann campuses agreed to last week, an offer Dickson said moved talks "in the opposite direction."

Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), which represents nurses at all three campuses, including the 1,100 at the University campus who plan to strike, criticized management for refusing to negotiate. "They also informed the (federal) mediator that when nurses strike, they intend to lock all nurses out for the four days following the strike," the union statement read.

The nurses voted last month to authorize the one-day walkout; they endorsed the action Tuesday night at open meetings.

The health care system said Friday it transferred $4 million to a staffing firm to provide replacements who will fill in for striking nurses for at least five days. The nurses union has called that action a "lockout," which it said will subject patients to "substandard care by replacement nurses drawn from all over the country who have no familiarity" with the hospital.

"We are disappointed by management's refusal to negotiate a settlement to this contract, yet we are committed to standing up for patients and our union rights," said Margaret McLaughlin, co-chair of the nurses' local bargaining unit for the University campus. "We continue to seek improvements in deplorable patient care conditions caused by chronic understaffing of nurses at this level one trauma center and are committed to do whatever it takes to keep our patients safe."

At the heart of the negotiations has been what MNA contends are unsafe staffing levels.

In his Monday statement, meanwhile, Dickson said: "The medical center's proposal reflected a fair and competitive package in line with the shared sacrifices already agreed to by the five non-MNA bargaining units and our nonunion staff and managers, along with appropriately enhanced safe staffing that their own (bargaining unit at) Memorial and Hahnemann … agreed to.

"We are well prepared to take safe care of all our patients at our University campus," Dickson said. "That is, and will remain, our number-one priority in the coming days."

Details of the union's proposal, which was posted on a UMass Memorial website, can be found here.

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