Nurses to Picket Hospital Over Pay

As a bargaining ploy, nurses plan to picket Ventura County Medical Center on Friday to protest pay and staffing practices they say are putting patients at risk.

They will then take their case Feb. 23 to the county Board of Supervisors.

Below-market salaries, forced overtime shifts and dependence on a pool of “intermittent” nurses have undercut the quality of care that patients at the county hospital receive, said Yoli Rios, spokeswoman for the California Nurses Assn.

“This has put patients at risk,” Rios said.

The union wants the county to hire 80 more nurses and give 8% pay increases to 250 nurses and psychiatric technicians.

County officials say the quality of care at the county hospital is high, as shown by the medical center’s recent 83% rating by a national accreditation board.

The real issue here, they said, is pay. The county has agreed to an immediate increase of only 1%.

But over the next several months--before the nursing union’s contract expires in September--the county has also agreed to conduct a survey of pay and benefits at local private hospitals and county facilities in other Southern California jurisdictions.

Jane Mahnken, chief negotiator for Ventura County, said she was taken aback by the union’s sudden, aggressive posture since the parties are already arguing their differences before a state mediator.

The county and nurses are in the midst of a two-year contract, but a provision allowed renegotiation of pay last fall.

Rios maintains that a statewide nursing shortage has increased the value of nurses to such a degree that an 8% salary hike is justified. Plus, county nurses have received pay increases of only 2% during the last seven years, including a forced reduction of 9% in 1994, she said.

A county nurse with three years experience is paid $18.34 an hour, compared with about $24 at large neighboring hospitals, Rios said. A critical care nurse is paid about $23 an hour at the county hospital, compared to about $27 at private hospitals, she said.

Additional problems under discussion include the county’s practice of sometimes keeping nurses on call for eight hours after they finish their eight-hour shifts.