Nurses union spotlights negotiations with a candlelight vigil

By Diana Cox

Published Thursday, Sept. 11, 2008 | midnight

Updated Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2008 | 4:20 p.m.

As the sun set on Sept. 10, nurses and other health-care workers of St. Rose Dominican Hospitals and some community members, took to the street in front of the Emergency Room at the Siena campus, lighting candles and waved yellow Service Employees International Union flags.

The purpose, said union officials, was to shine a light on the hospital's responsibility to make St. Rose a better place to work.

SEIU members are negotiating for cost-of-living raises, better health insurance for health care workers, more staffing at better wages, better retirement, the ability to cash out paid time off when needed and to eliminate top limits on paid time off.

Labor and delivery nurse Mary Johnson, who has been with St. Rose for eight years, said the vigil was a drastic measure.

"We are doing this because they are not working with us," she said.

According to SEIU president Shauna Hamel, an intensive care nurse, only one of the union's proposals has been bargained on.

St. Rose spokesman Andy North said in a statement, "We have been bargaining in good faith with the SEIU bargaining team and have addressed many of their key issues. We believe that St. Rose management employees and union partners share an overall vision of establishing the highest standard of safety and quality."

The reasons for demanding better contracts, the nurses say, is to ensure the highest quality of patient care. They note when there are not enough nurses on staff, the patients are the ones who suffer. "We entered our profession to give the best patient care," said Hamel. "We can't exactly tell laboring moms to take a break," Johnson said.

According to North, in St. Rose's most current contract with the SEIU and employees, St. Rose agreed to establish an administrative policy that outlines staffing ratios by unit in each of the hospitals. This was the first agreement of its kind in Nevada.

Additionally, "Management, St. Rose employees and union partners have worked collaboratively on several initiatives over the past few years and as a result each of the St. Rose campuses has been recognized with some of the highest quality and patient satisfaction measures in the state," he said.

The SEIU bargaining team met with St. Rose representatives at 9 a.m. the next morning to continue contract negotiations.

Diana Cox can be reached at 990-8183 or [email protected].