News

July 2, 2009

W-B General nurses: Proposals ‘unreasonable’

Staffing, retirement, health care are sticking points in contract talks, union says.

By Jerry Lynott jlynott@timesleader.com
Business Writer
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WILKES-BARRE – Unionized nurses at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital called management’s proposals for key contract issues “unreasonable” but said they would stand together to hold on to what they bargained for in the past.

Health care, retirement and staffing are the sticking points that led to a breakdown in talks, said members of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals who gathered Wednesday on the corner of North Franklin and West Linden streets across from the hospital.

“I don’t want to go backwards, and that is what I, along with the 400 other nurses I work with, will be doing if we accept this contract proposal,” said Jacquie Chervenitski, a registered nurse in the obstetrics department.

The benefits and working conditions she bargained for in her more than 30 years on the job will be taken away if Community Health Systems Inc., the for-profit company that bought the hospital as part of a $271 million deal, gets its way with a “totally unreasonable contract,” Chervenitski said.

The hospital issued a statement saying the negotiations are between Wilkes-Barre General and PASNAP, but it declined to address specific issues raised by the union.

Still union members referred to CHS as the other party in the negotiations.

When CHS took over the Wyoming Valley Health Care System in May, labor law required that it renegotiate a new contract to replace the one reached in 2005. On the table are company proposals replacing the pension with a 401(k) plan, as well as increasing the amount nurses pay for prescription drugs and health care. On the issue of how many patients a nurse will take care of on a shift, the company has been silent, said Bill Cruice, executive director of the union, who joined the nurses at the afternoon press conference.

The two sides met six times last month, with the union expecting to reach a deal by Tuesday. They’ve reached tentative agreements on some issues. However, the nurses are worried about the approach CHS, the largest publicly traded hospital company in the nation, will take in running the formerly nonprofit Wilkes-Barre General, Cruice added.

“Is it going to simply be to do whatever they can to squeeze money out of the hospital? Or are they going to operate a hospital based on what is in the best interest of the community and the patients that they serve rather than a corporation headquartered in Tennessee?” he asked.

The union expects to meet with the company this month and is agreeable to having a federal mediator come in to negotiate a contract by early August, when the current one expires, Cruice said.

A strike is the last resort, he added. The nurses went on strike in January 2003 and also were locked out by WVHCS that year in a 15-day labor dispute .

“I have a feeling that CHS doesn’t realize how unified, how strong the nurses at this hospital are,” Cruice said.

Jerry Lynott, a Times Leader staff writer, can be contacted at 570 829-7237.

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