Nurses, hospital workers fight company takeback demands

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After a month-long strike, nurses at six private hospitals in San Francisco and Daly City, Calif., ratified a new contract on Aug. 28 with Affiliated Hospitals, the management group representing the six hospitals. The new contract calls for a 21 percent pay increase over 34 months.

Earlier, on Aug. 19, the 2200 nurses had overwhelmingly rejected a contract from Affiliated Hospitals that offered a 20 percent increase over a three-year period. Both contracts offer a $5-per-shift weekend differential.

Better wages was the key issue of the strike. Said one nurse at Mt. Zion Hospital, "We're dealing with life and death decisions all day long, we should be fairly compensated for it. The $5-a-shift weekend pay is an insult."

Despite approving this contract, nurses have still expressed a lot of dissatisfaction with it. "There's a lot of anger in there right now," said one nurse at St. Francis Hospital. "A lot of people feel they didn't give us a good enough contract. I think they're frustrated that they can't push any further."

Earlier in August, nurses at San Francisco's public hospitals narrowly accepted a one-year contract by a margin of only 13 votes. Hospital workers, organized by Service Employees International Union, Local 250, also ratified a contract in August-after a 20-day strike—with the same private hospitals that were struck by the California Nurses Association (CNA).

Nurses and hospital workers-which include dietary workers, housekeeper and laundry employees, surgical and psychiatric technicians, and janitors, as well as some licensed vocational nurses-are the backbone of any hospital. Like workers everywhere, their paychecks have steadily shrunk as their hours and workloads increased.

Adding insult to injury, hospital managements have demanded that healthcare benefits and paid sick leave be given up by these workers. Healthcare benefits was a key issue in the Local 250 strike. The hospitals wanted a $30-a-month co-payment for the most basic health insurance plan, and up to $100 a month for more expensive plans.

In addition, the hospitals sought to impose a wage freeze and to take short-term sick days out of hospital workers' vacation ON Quality healthcare should not be a luxury reserved only for those who can afford to pay for it. And nurses and hospital workers who provide the bulk of this care should receive decent salaries and benefits for the vital work they perform. The only way this will come about is when the medical system is turned around and quality healthcare is provided for people-and not for profits.

Healthcare for profit The hospitals involved in the San Francisco nurses' strike are all "nonprofit" organizations that began at the turn of the century as charity or community institutions.

A good idea, but not one that would survive under capitalism. For hospital executives, caring for the sick is simply another business. And like any other business in this society, profits ist Action are the priority. This translates into cutting costs-easily done by cutting marketing their most profitable serMay May Gong vices such as sports medicine, plastic surgery, sleep disorder clinics, and the like. But the key to keeping any hospital's budget in the black is turning away those who can't pay—the uninsured.

The national trend of employers requiring co-payments and higher deductibles for health insutance has resulted in larger numbers of working people being uninsured. In just the last 10 years, 11 million people joined the ranks of the uninsured.

Thirty-seven million people in this country don't have any form of health insurance. Sick people who have no insurance don't get the care they require, often ignoring the early symptoms of illness until the illness gets much worse.

The problem is even more tragic for uninsured children—one in 10 American babies dies before reaching its first birthday. And because 26 percent of women of childbearing age have no maternity coverage, the numbers can only get bigger. -M.M.G.

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