Nurses should not strike

The nurses want better pensions, retiree health benefits and wages and are planning to stage a 48-hour strike at the San Mateo Medical Center and 40 other sites between Daly City and Palo Alto.

The California Nurses Association hopes the action will force the county to come up with a better deal. The nurses also want to draw the public’s attention to what CNA President Deborah Burger calls the "threats to the quality of patient care and community health services.”

I’m not sure what Burger meant by that statement and since she did not return my call, I did not have the opportunity to ask her what she meant.

One thing I can say, though, is that a 48-hour strike by these nurses will, without question, pose "threats to the quality of patient care and community health services” for the hundreds, if not thousands, of people who rely on county facilities for their health care needs.

The county’s nurses are the lowest paid in Northern California, according to the CNA, and make far less than nurses who work at Kaiser or Stanford hospitals.

To be fair, Kaiser Permanente simply passes the cost of these contracts off to its thousands of members and Stanford seems to have a bottomless pit of money. The county does not have the same resources that Kaiser and Stanford have and therefore cannot legitimately pay its nurses comparable wages.

These nurses who intend to strike are civil servants paid solely by the taxpayer. The collective bargaining agreement is made between the county and the nurses’ union. The union does its best to negotiate for the nurses and the taxpayer has to believe the county does its best to negotiate on their behalf.

One nurse I spoke with on Wednesday, who wants to remain anonymous, said a lot of animosity exists between the nurses and county because the county recently gave its management a 25 percent salary increase. The nurse also said the county poorly used public funds to build an X ray room at one of its newest facilities that is now used for supplies and staff lunches. "Rather extravagant to most of us,” the nurse said.

"We live in an affluent county and we should be paid accordingly,” the nurse said.

Although negotiations have broken off between the nurses’ union and the county, the county says it is willing to sit back down with a state mediator to resolve the conflict and avoid a strike.

"I think there is always hope” to avoid a strike, said San Mateo County Supervisor Jerry Hill.

The county has made concessions to the nurses in the negotiating process and they will be paid on par with nurses employed by neighboring counties, Hill said.

Although the medical center is braced for the strike, the effects of a two-day walkout could be tragic.

Clinic appointments, some made three months in advance, will be canceled, geriatric and long-term patients may have to be moved and emergency room procedures will be limited.

The strike is only scheduled for 48 hours but a lot can happen in that short time and innocent county residents may suffer the consequences.

Nurses, like cops and firefighters, are the real pillars of a community. Nurses are really unsung heroes. It is a demanding job, filled with stress and grief. I would guess most nurses probably don’t feel appreciated so a boost in pay is seen as a symbolic gesture of gratitude.

Well, I’m certainly appreciative of all the thankless, hard work nurses do. Unfortunately, I can’t reach into my pocket for money that is not there to help solve the problem. These nurses must remember they are not negotiating with Stanford or Kaiser. The nurses are negotiating, essentially, with the taxpayer. Times are tough and the money isn’t flowing like it was a decade ago.

I urge the California Nurses Association to sit back down with the county and resume negotiations in earnest.

The thousands of residents who rely on the care of county nurses should not be made to suffer for even a day, much less two, over a contract dispute.

The strike scheduled for May 17 through May 19 should be canceled. Walking off the job, in this case, is not the right way to make a point.

Bill Silverfarb’s column runs every Friday. He can be reached by e-mail: silverfarb@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 104. What do you think of this column? Send a letter to the editor: letters@smdailyjournal.com.

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