Nearly 23,000 nurses in Northern and Central California took to the streets Thursday in a show of massive force by unionized registered nurses.
Wearing their signature red scrubs, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United RNs joined rallies and walked picket lines with signs that read, “Some Cuts Don’t Heal” and “Community Care, Not Corporate Profits.”
From Santa Rosa to Fresno and from Sacramento to San Jose, they gathered outside 34 hospitals of two of California’s largest hospital chains, Sutter Health and Kaiser Permanente, as well as Children’s Hospital Oakland.
The California nurses sent a message: They will not accept reductions in patient services or cuts to benefits for nurses and other caregivers.
“When nurses are on the outside, there’s something wrong on the inside,” CNA Co-President and RN DeAnn McEwen told the crowd at the rally.
She called the sweeping concession demands by Sutter “drastic, unwarranted, and unconscionable. They’re harming patients and we’re standing in the gap.”
The one-day strike started at 7 a.m. – although Sutter and Children’s have threatened a lockout to nurses for additional days.
As the strike began, nurses finishing their 12-hour shift at Sutter Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley poured out of the hospital, grabbed a cup of coffee and picked up a picket sign.
Nurses received roses from passersby and heard sounds of passing cars, trucks and ambulances honking in support. They were ready for the biggest nurse strike in U.S. history.
At a boisterous rally at Sutter Alta Bates Summit, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka praised the RNs as “the last line of defense for patients.”
“They disrespect you by attacking your healthcare, your retirement benefits, your right to advocate for patients, and now they want to force you to work when you are sick,” he said. “Having sick nurses care for sick patients is sick.”
Trumka said it was 23,000 nurses taking a stand, but that they were joined by “millions of patients” and had the support of working people across the country.
“Nurses will never be silenced in standing up for our patients and our communities, or our members and our families,” says Children’s Oakland registered nurse Martha Kuhl.
RNs at Sutter are protesting management’s 200 sweeping demands, including restricting their ability to effectively advocate for patients, sharply reducing healthcare coverage and retiree health benefits, and forcing nurses to work when sick, dangerously exposing extremely ill patients to infection.
Sutter is making these demands and cutting services despite amassing $3.7 billion in profits the past half decade. Sutter pays 20 top executives more than $1 million each in salaries. If the need to cut costs, they need to start with their own fat salaries.
At Kaiser hospitals, nurses are participating in a sympathy strike to support other frontline healthcare workers.
For Children’s Hospital Oakland RNs, this strike marks the third one over attempts by the hospital administration to limit healthcare coverage for nurses and their families. These demands would make it prohibitively expensive for nurses to bring their own children to get care at the hospital where they work, and inadequate staffing at the hospital.