[act-ma] Extended interview on St. Vincent Nurses Strike

[Charlie Welch]

Extended interview on strike

Summary: St. Vincent Nurses Strike Sadly Reached 6-Months on Sept. 8th
As Tenet Healthcare Continues to Deny Agreement to Ensure Safer Patient 
Care for a Community Hard
Hit by Delta Variant
To Date, Tenet has invested more than $100 million to prolong the strike 
and avoid needed improvements in staffing to ensure safer patient care, 
while engaging in a number of illegal labor practices to intimidate and 
retaliate against nurses for advocating for safer conditions
With
Marie Marie Ritacco, RN , St. Vincents Hospital, Worcester, MA

On Wednesday, Sept. 8, the St. Vincent nurses strike reached another sad 
milestone in their struggle against Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, which 
began a full six months earlier on March 8 in a last-ditch effort by the 
nurses to finally convince Tenet Healthcare, one of the most profitable 
corporations in America, to finally put their concern for patients ahead 
of their ravenous desire for profits.

As the strike, now the longest nurses strike in state history, reaches 
its seventh month, it is important for the public to remember how the 
nurses arrived at this point.

The fact that we are still outside this hospital, the hospital we love 
and have served, some of us for 10, 20 even 40 years is a travesty and 
serves as an indictment of Tenet Healthcare and their unyielding desire 
for profit and power at the expense of the suffering of our patients and 
our community, said Marlena Pellegrino, RN, a longtime nurse at the 
hospital and co-chair of the nurses local bargaining unit of the 
Massachusetts Nurses Association. Our nurses want nothing more than to 
be back at the bedside to provide our patients with the dignity and 
expert care they expect and deserve from this, their community hospital. 
Unfortunately, Tenet has refused an agreement that would allow that to 
happen, choosing instead to spend millions to keep us out, to pursue 
illegal practices to punish us for our advocacy " all to avoid 
accountability for providing safe patient care.

http://www.radio4all.net/files/knash@igc.org/123-1-Massnursesntl.mp3