As the presidents of the health care unions representing Windham Neighborhood Memorial Medical center (WCMH)’s nurses and allied wellness specialists we are obligated to ring the “bed alarm” when individual care is jeopardized. We have been performing that considering that negotiations with the hospital’s management and lawyers with Hartford Healthcare (HHC), the business that owns the acute-treatment facility, started to bathroom down this summer.
Our regional nurses union, the Windham Federation of Skilled Nurses, has considering that moved to authorize an unfair labor practice strike at WCMH. We know that this announcement might feel frightening, but we have not come to this conclusion flippantly.
Given that December of 2021, the caregivers at WCMH have been laser-concentrated on performing alongside one another with medical center management to solve our region’s individual care disaster. Fairly than recognizing its workforce by agreeing to common-sense alternatives, the chain’s legal professionals have refused truthful wage increases and pushed higher staff insurance coverage fees.
Since HHC took above WCMH, there has been a dramatic shift from top quality affected individual care to constructive functioning margins. HHC’s “partnership” and acquisition has led to the decline of essential expert services these types of as our Intense Care Device (ICU) and our Labor and Supply Unit.
Right after just about two years of deliberation, the state’s Business office of Health System has proposed a ultimate conclusion denying Hartford Healthcare’s application to terminate maternity solutions at WCMH, a conclusion which HHC has contested. HHC is currently named in a course-motion lawsuit for overcharging patients in its tier program, and has also been taken to courtroom by Trinity Health of New England for monopolizing healthcare solutions.
Even though our nurses put together to consider this significant stage, leaders and activists with the hospital’s provider and upkeep union, WCMH United Personnel, are tough at work assessing their upcoming steps. Their membership stands powerful in aid of the nurses’ determination to choose this spectacular motion.
We are not by itself in an marketplace wherever health chain CEOs and their attorneys are increasingly turning a blind eye to the phone calls of caregivers to put clients in advance of revenue. Nurses and wellbeing gurus are using collective action – and in numerous conditions, that consists of strikes – to carry out this important target on behalf of the communities we serve.
We are now contacting on patients, their family members and all who share our fears to join us. Enable us keep this heartless health care chain’s executives and legal professionals accountable by signing and sharing our petition today.
Andrea Riley, RN is President of the Windham Federation of Specialist Nurses, AFT Regional 5041. Heather Howlett, CA, is President of the WCMH United Employees, AFT Local 5099.
With each other the authors depict somewhere around 400 registered nurses and allied wellness industry experts at the Hartford Healthcare (HHC)-owned Windham Group Memorial Hospital (WCMH) in Windham and its husband or wife health-related services.