Striking nurses, community join forces against scab outfit

Support for striking Temple University Hospital nurses and professional staff is gaining momentum among community-based organizations, which will be holding a benefit on April 29 to collect supplies needed by the strikers’ families.

Philadelphia International Action Center, Jobs with Justice, Bail Out the People Movement and the A-Space are sponsoring a happy hour and dance party featuring DJ Phantasma Rojo in West Philadelphia. Admission will be a donation of diapers, non-perishable food, shampoo, soaps and other items requested by striking nurses. For more information on the benefit, email [email protected].

As the strike enters its fourth week, negotiations seem to be at a standstill. In September 2009 the hospital administration presented the nurses with a contract that would double health premiums for nurses and triple them for the professional/technical staff. It would freeze wages for year one of the contract and reduce hard-won wage differentials for undesirable shifts and 24-hour on-call rates.

The hospital is also attempting to impose a “non-disparagement” clause — basically a gag order that would prohibit the nurses and other staff from voicing their concerns over patient safety or making any other statements that management found “derogatory of Temple.”

TUH also refuses to reinstate a long-standing tuition reimbursement benefit for employees’ dependents that the hospital eliminated with no notice in 2009, even though the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board ruled the hospital’s action illegal. The hospital administration has not moved from this concession-laden contract, which it termed its “last, best offer.”

To put added pressure on the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, the union representing 1,500 nurses and professional staff at the hospital, the administration engaged a notorious California-based strike-breaking company, HealthSource Global Staffing, to provide over 800 scabs.

To date the hospital has spent more money to pay strikebreakers than it would have cost to cover the additional costs of contract provisions sought by PASNAP.

In week one alone it paid more than $5 million for scabs secured by HSGS, covering salaries, transportation including airfares, food and accommodations at luxury hotels. HSGS also received more than $1 million in profits during this time — an amount equal to the yearly cost of the tuition reimbursement benefit for employees’ dependents that the hospital cut.

On April 16 the union’s bargaining committee offered compromises on wages, benefits and the tuition reimbursement program, seeking to move negotiations off square one and end the strike. After a 15-minute face-to-face session, the hospital management refused to budge from their “last, best offer” and even consider the union’s new proposals. “They are recklessly stubborn,” the union’s executive director, Bill Cruice, said later.

Concern continues to grow that TUH administration’s refusal to negotiate while squandering millions of dollars on scab replacements will damage the hospital’s reputation for years and may also be putting patients’ health at risk.

According to one observer, “Inside the hospital, things do not appear to be going quite as management planned. The Emergency Department has been diverting more patients in the last few weeks than it has in the last year. Every day, physicians and staff not represented by PASNAP relate incidents of labs not drawn or results delivered hours late, agency staff unable to work complex machinery, and problems with computer documentation.” (Marty Harrison, www.labornotes.org)

Meanwhile more information has surfaced on HealthSource Global Staffing, the strike-breaking specialist engaged by TUH in the hospital’s obvious effort to bust the union.

On April 14 Philadelphia City Controller Alan Butkovitz asked for clarification about the employment status of the replacement workers, noting that HealthSource Global Staffing had never filed for a business privilege license from the city. Butkovitz estimated that the company should owe $190,000 a week in wages taxes, since the scab workers were considered their employees.

In 2009, California’s state compensation insurance fund sued HSGS to collect more than $1 million in taxes owed that state. On April 16, HSGS applied for and received a Philadelphia business privilege license. Union executive director Bill Cruice said, “It’s par for the course for HealthSource Global. They have a sordid history.”