Nurses’ Strike to End Today With Sides Still Far Apart

A nurses strike over staffing and pay issues at two Ventura County hospitals is set to end today with both sides far from agreement and another walkout possible if negotiations stall again.

“I’m very hopeful that they will see we are strong and determined,” said Janet Brown, a nurse who is part of the union’s bargaining team. “I am hopeful we won’t have to do this again.”

Talks are tentatively scheduled to resume next week.

The two-week walkout has cost St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard and St. John’s Pleasant Valley in Camarillo more than $1 million in replacement nurses, security and other fees, said Charles Padilla, chief operating officer at both facilities.

Nurses were offered an 11% pay raise to bring their salaries more in line with other local hospitals. Hospital administrators portrayed the move--which will cost $1.4 million annually--as evidence of good-faith bargaining. Nurses accused management of trying to divert attention from staffing levels, which they say are too low to provide safe patient care.

“We are willing to discuss staffing but we won’t discuss specific ratios,” Padilla said. “This has been our position from Day One.”

Padilla said it is unreasonable to give employees authority to determine how many nurses are needed. But he is open to the idea of forming nursing committees that have a say in health care issues. Striking nurses are skeptical, saying these panels have no actual power.

Yet Brown said a strong nursing committee could be good.

“It would be a good starting point for talks, but not an ending point,” she said. “I would have to hear their proposal first.”

In the end, Padilla labeled the strike “fruitless” and said it was an attempt by the 1.4-million-member Service Employees International Union to increase membership. The nurses belong to a local chapter of the union.

“What did they accomplish except to drive up costs at the hospitals?” he said.

For two weeks, both sides have held brief meetings that broke up after attempts to discuss staffing by the nurses were met by efforts to talk money by the administration. Nurses want to discuss how many patients are assigned to each of them. They say too many patients per nurse can result in substandard care.

Padilla doesn’t deny there are occasional staffing problems but says they stem from a national nursing shortage and are not specific to his hospitals.

Gail Pollock, an operating room nurse, said it was the hospital that always walked away from talks. Nurses are confident that they will ultimately prevail, she said.

“Everyone feels very powerful by the [strike] action that was taken,” she said. “I think the hospital is feeling pressure from the top to settle a contract this time.”

Padilla denied that. He said he was in close contact with Catholic Healthcare West, which owns the hospitals, but all the decisions made in this strike have been made locally.

He said he hopes to avoid another strike and another million-dollar loss.

The nurses also said they won’t rush into another strike but would consider doing so if talks break down. Many of the nurses took temporary jobs at other local hospitals during the strike.

St. John’s administration has pointed to the fact that the number of nurses demonstrating outside the hospital is often small, and that an undetermined number of the 530 union nurses crossed picket lines, as evidence that the strike did not have widespread support. But nurses and union representatives say the intent was never to throw a cordon around the hospital or to keep replacement nurses out.

“We hit them where it hurts, in the pocketbook,” Thomas said. “They are spending big dollars on this strike.”

The hospitals flew about 150 nurses in from U.S. Nursing Corp. of Denver, paying them between $35 and $50 an hour. They also installed a steel fence around the facility in Oxnard and invested in additional security.

Padilla said he would welcome the nurses back and hopes there will be no animosity among hospital staff because of the strike.

“I believe nobody wins in a strike, everyone lost,” he said.