Labor & Employment Law

Washington Hospital Center Agrees to Recognize Nurses? Union

By James Parks

The Washington Hospital Center has agreed to recognize the National Nurses United (NNU) as the collective bargaining representative of the hospital’s registered nurses. The NNU has canceled a planned one-day strike originally scheduled for Wednesday, Nov.  24, the day before Thanksgiving. 

The Hospital Center and NNU have agreed to return to the bargaining table on Nov. 29 under the auspices of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service to continue negotiations over the next 90 days without the threat of a strike.

Last week, some 90 percent of the nurses voted to wage the one-day strike Nov. 24. Last month, the 1,600 registered nurses at WHC voted to join NNU. They had been in the independent organization Nurses United of the National Capital Region.

The union said it was planning to stage the work action to protest unfair labor practices and to force management to negotiate a new agreement. The union filed the unfair labor practices complaint after the hospital imposed its last offer, which in part prompted the nurses to affiliate with NNU.  The imposed offer would have resulted in a wage cut effective Jan. 2 and would exacerbate staffing problems by cutting shift work incentives.  

The union says chronic nurse understaffing is hurting patient care, which hospital officials dispute. WHC management also unilaterally imposed restrictions on nurses? ability to advocate for their patients by eliminating a labor-management patient-care committee and making significant wage and benefit cuts. To learn more, click here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on November 18, 2010 (boomark / email).