Registered nurses at 15 Sutter health facilities across Northern California will be holding informational pickets Tuesday in protest of the health network’s alleged refusal to address health and safety concerns, the California Nurses Association and the National Nurses United said in a press release.
The pickets will take place from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Locations include Vallejo, Santa Rosa, Crescent City, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Castro Valley, Antioch, Auburn, Roseville, Lakeport, Burlingame, Novato, and Sacramento.
“We have been on the front lines before and during this pandemic,” said Amy Erb, a critical care RN at California Pacific Medical Center of San Francisco. “Throughout this time, we have witnessed Sutter Health become profitable while they refuse to invest in the resources, we need in order for us to provide safe and effective care to our patients and community.”
The nurse’s association said Sutter has refused to discuss the registered nurses’ proposals on issues about staffing, workplace violence, and pandemic readiness.
“Sutter Health is not investing in us, the nurses, or the community they should be serving,” said Renee Waters, RN in the trauma neuro intensive care unit at Sutter Roseville. “Instead, they are frequently using the word ‘commitment’ in their responses to us without actually agreeing to proposals that hold them accountable. Sutter failed us during the pandemic.”
According to the press release, Sutter Health nurses have been in contract negotiations since June 2021. They are asking for provisions including: safe staffing that allows nurses to provide safe and therapeutic care; pandemic readiness protections; presumptive eligibility for workers’ compensation that covers infectious diseases and protocols that ensure nurses have the resources needed to keep their patients and themselves safe; and workplace violence protections that include plans to mitigate and prevent violence within the hospitals and comply with the state’s workplace violence prevention law.
When hospitals put profit over patients and employees these issues should be of no surprise.
And the most important thing was left out, increasing our wages! $$$
@TraumaRx….I thought seatbelts we’re the most important thing…???
So the “most important thing “ IS your pay.
Convenient that it’s left out of your “demands” about safety etc….
Just as I figured. Maybe you should look for a job where you’re happier. You’re sure not concerned about patients with that attitude.
So why don’t you tell us which hospital you’re at so we can go elsewhere?
Darn right $$$$$
So tell us which hospital you’re at. We’d like to know so we can avoid the one where your pay is most important.
C’mon – don’t be shy. We know that patients are not your concern. And I wouldn’t want to go to a place where you’re distracted.
@Glen223…. Pretty sure at one time “he/she/it” alluded to working at the county hospital in Martinez.
Nurses make too much already. No reason for them to be making over $100k a year starting.
Jealousy is envy. $$
This has got to stop sometime, it’s to expensive and given CA’s large %% of State supported Medical, it will be painful in Sacramento and down right dread full for Taxpayers
Not addressing their grievances specifically, but the only picketers I can ever give an “atta boy” or horn honk to are janitors and housekeepers. Because I know they’re making peanuts. It would be hard enough to get worked up for someone making 20% more than me, but in the case of nurses, we’re talking sometimes twice or triple. Yeah, yeah, I know, but you work so hard. Well so do a lot of us. We work overnights, double shifts, and endure verbal abuse, too. The difference is we’re likely to get splattered with our own blood instead of someone else’s. Never heard of a nurse falling off a ladder or cutting their finger off. Some nurses are angels, sure. And some are demons, I’ve met a couple. The employee parking lot at any hospital looks like a luxury car dealership. They don’t appear to be hurting for money.
Jealousy is envy $$
Traumarx – just go pat yourself on the head.
We know who the professionals are – and they don’t have to whine and cry.
C’mon – tell us where you work.
Sounds like a terrible place to work, why not just find another job somewhere else?
Gotta love it when nurses (or teachers) stand around complaining about how bad off they are. No one threw a net over them and forced them into this occupation. They chose it and they get paid a heck of a lot of money to do it. Flight attendants, store clerks, taxi drivers, bus drivers ….. practically anyone whose job involves interacting with the public is in the same situation – and they don’t make a fraction of the salary nurses get. Sorry you’re not special. Don’t like it? Do something else where you can work from home.
A great many people have decided to emulate our elected representatives.
Until there is a change in how politicians run things, nothing else will change.
Ultimately it’s up to the “we the people” to be in control.
Until we do, it’ll be the same old baloney.