Nurses, 2 Hospitals Fail to Resolve Issues

Negotiators for registered nurses and the owners of St. John’s hospitals in Oxnard and Camarillo have set a new bargaining session for Tuesday after an unproductive meeting left wage and staffing issues unresolved.

The union, representing most of the 530 nurses at St. John’s Regional Medical Center and St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital, have set a strike deadline for 5:30 a.m. Dec. 14 if negotiations remain deadlocked. The strike would last up to two weeks.

Talks late Thursday resolved nothing, officials said.

The sides have negotiated since March--through about three dozen meetings. A federal mediator has also worked to settle the dispute. Each side accuses the other of bargaining in bad faith.

Nurses maintain that their salaries and benefits are far below those at comparable area hospitals, and that St. John’s staffing levels run nurses ragged and jeopardize patients.

Hospital officials say patients are safe. And they say nurses have not responded to a $1.2-million wage offer this week that would increase the nurses’ salary range from about $18.50 to more than $29 per hour. That essentially matches the nursing contract at Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks.

The Service Employees International Union represents nurses at Los Robles and, since January, most nurses at St. John’s.

“We’re a little puzzled why they won’t take a look at a proposal that has already been approved by the SEIU at Los Robles,” said St. John’s spokesman Armando Azarloza.

Officials with the Service Employees International Union said there are key differences in the contracts. The St. John’s offer excludes some nurses from the offer, a key sticking point, they said. A more important issue of nurses’ participation in staffing decisions remains unresolved, they said.

Lisa Hubbard, spokeswoman for the union, said wages and benefits “are not the primary issue” anymore. “Foremost are the nurses’ concerns about staffing levels and the safety of patients,” she said.

Azarloza said nurses have always participated in staffing decisions at St. John’s. “But management has to be able to maintain direction over staffing levels,” he said.

The St. John’s hospitals are owned by Catholic Healthcare West, the state’s largest hospital chain. The Service Employees International Union plans to strike five of the chain’s hospitals on Dec. 14--two locally and three in the San Francisco area.