Nurses Strike Continues at Seven Private S.F. Hospitals

Strikes by 1,600 registered nurses against private hospitals continued into the seventh day Monday, one day after the city reached a tentative agreement that is expected to avert a separate strike by 2,000 nurses that would have crippled San Francisco General and other city-run facilities.

The private nurses’ walkout started Aug. 2 at six hospitals represented by Affiliated Hospitals of San Francisco and spread Saturday to a seventh, French Hospital. The nurses want better staffing and objected to management attempts to impose mandatory 12-hour shifts.

Negotiators for the affiliated group and the California Nurses Assn. were to meet late Monday with Mayor Art Agnos and a federal mediator, their first meeting since the strike began.

In addition, about 1,700 licensed vocational nurses and other support workers represented by the Hospital and Health Care Workers Union, Local 250, have been on strike since June 26 at eight affiliated hospitals, including one not being struck by the registered nurses.

Union representatives of the 2,000 public nurses, who had threatened to strike Wednesday, reached an agreement with the city early Sunday morning after Agnos assigned two deputy mayors and the city’s director of public health to join hospital management at the bargaining table.

Neither side would release the precise terms of the agreement, but one nurse close to the negotiations said the city accepted union requests to improve staffing levels and addressed the salary freeze issue.

Salaries of city employees, including the nurses, had been frozen as part of Agnos’ efforts to meet a $180-million budget shortfall. Officials of the city nurses’ union said they expect members to approve the one-year pact when they vote today.