Healthcare workers rallied outside Philadelphia-based Temple University Hospital Oct. 1 to protect their jobs amid contract negotiations, according to TV station WHYY.
The workers included nurses represented by Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals as well as allied technical workers represented by Temple Allied Professionals, a subcommittee of the union.
They say they want to ensure a new contract includes successorship language requiring future Temple University Hospital owners to carry over the labor deal already established, the station reported. They also seek standardized staffing ratios.
"As everyone knows, there's all sorts of mergers and sales going on in this city," Mary Adamson, a nurse who serves on the bargaining committee at the hospital, told WHYY. "We have fought as a union workforce for almost five decades, and these contracts build on each other. So, if another organization comes in and takes over, our contract would be null and void, and we'd have to start over again."
The station said there has been no official proposal for an ownership change, but workers have cited efforts that they take as indications that a deal is possible in the future. One effort cited is an agreement announced in July for Philadelphia-based Temple University to sell Fox Chase Cancer Center and its interest in Health Partners Plan to Thomas Jefferson University, also in Philadelphia.
Temple Health did not respond to WHYY's request for comment.