Saint Vincent, nurses union reach agreement to end 9-month strike

Photo: VioletaStoimenova/Getty Images

The Massachusetts Nurses Association and Worcester-based Saint Vincent Hospital have reached a tentative agreement, inking a contract that will end a strike that has lasted almost nine months.

Once the agreement is ratified, the striking nurses will return to their original positions, while retaining all permanent replacement nurses in their current positions, the union said. The agreement was reached on Friday after two weeks of discussions with federal mediators, and about two years of negotiations.

According to the union, it was the longest nurses' strike nationally in over 15 years and the second longest nurses' strike in Massachusetts history.

The agreement, the union said, "provides the staffing improvements the nurses need to end the strike and re-enter the hospital to provide care to their community in the face of an emerging new surge of COVID-19 driven by the Omicron variant."

While the nurses say they didn't get everything they sought, they secured what they called "important staffing improvements" they believe will enhance their ability to provide safe, high-quality care. The final component of the agreement is the "back to work" provision, which guarantees all nurses who went out on strike the right to return to work to the same position, hours and shift that they worked prior to the strike, while providing a process for the parties to follow in recalling the nurses back to work.

Specific details of the pact are being withheld until the tentative agreement can be shared with the rank-and-file members and a ratification vote is held. The nurses hope to hold the vote as soon as possible.

Saint Vincent provided little insight into the agreement in their own statement, but reserved praise for the nurses who continued to work at the hospital during the strike.

"The hospital believes every nurse who chose to work at Saint Vincent during the strike is a hero to this community, and they should be celebrated for their role in delivering quality care during this challenging time," the hospital said.

"Additionally, the decision to allow striking nurses to return to their original positions followed careful consideration of the clinical challenges expected this winter throughout Massachusetts, and the resultant need for as many nurses as possible to provide quality care for our community."

WHAT'S THE IMPACT?

The agreement shores up staffing for Saint Vincent at a time when COVID-19 is resurgent once again, this time driven by pesky variants such as Delta and Omicron. The Delta variant is potentially more severe than the original virus, while Omicron is less severe but more contagious.

The Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker has the grim news: The 28-day total for confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. stands at more than three million as of Monday morning, putting the total at almost 51 million since the pandemic began. There have been more than 34,000 deaths over the past four weeks, and more than 806,000 total.

THE LARGER TREND

Healthcare worker strikes, or at least the threat of strikes, have become more common since the onset of the pandemic, which has exacerbated ongoing staffing shortages and placed additional stress on those who remain at their posts. 

Most recently, in November, Kaiser Permanente and the Alliance of Health Care Unions reached a tentative agreement on a four-year contract that avoided a potential nationwide strike that had been set to begin around mid-month. The strike was over the health's system's proposals to lower wages for current employees and to reduce compensation for incoming workers – a proposal the group decried as burdensome in the midst of a healthcare staffing crisis.

Earlier in the year, Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West sued HCA Healthcare and its Riverside Community Hospital for allegedly "recklessly" facilitating the spread of COVID-19 among its workers and the Riverside, California, community. The lawsuit followed a strike of registered nurses at RCH earlier this summer.

The nurses issued a 10-day strike notice for staff shortages, resulting in fewer RNs taking care of more patients and insufficient PPE, leading to an increased risk of COVID-19 infection.

Staffing shortages are an ongoing, national problem. In September, the American Nurses Association sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services asking the agency to declare the ongoing nursing shortage a national crisis, citing overwhelmed health systems and burnt out staff.

Specifically, the ANA cited the Delta variant of COVID-19 as a complicating factor that has exacerbated the underlying challenges of a chronic shortage in the nursing workforce.

While the initial focus at the start of the pandemic was on equipment shortages and a dearth of ventilators and personal protective equipment, the ANA said the focus must now shift to the human-resource shortage, which the group cited as "more dire" and potentially threatening to patient care.

Data published in June by the Association of American Medical Colleges shows the U.S. could see an estimated shortage of between 37,800 and 124,000 physicians by 2034, including shortfalls in both primary and specialty care.

Twitter: @JELagasse
Email the writer: jeff.lagasse@himssmedia.com