Nurses at Pittsfield, Mass.-based Berkshire Medical Center plan to strike Feb. 27 if a contract agreement is not reached with management, according to the Massachusetts Nurses Association.
Here are six things to know.
1. The MNA, which represents nearly 800 BMC nurses, said in a statement that workers issued a strike notice at the conclusion of negotiations Thursday.
2. Nurses and management have been in negotiations since September 2016. BMC Nurses went on strike in October 2017, and last month, they voted to authorize another potential one-day strike. After a strike authorization, the law requires nurses to give hospital officials at least 10 days notice of a planned walkout.
3. The MNA said nurses chose to issue a strike notice Thursday after the latest unsuccessful attempt to resolve contract issues such as staffing.
"Nurses should never be forced to go on strike to protect patient care," said Alex Neary, RN, co-chair of the BMC MNA Bargaining Committee. "The hospital has told us they will not give up the right to make staffing worse if they want to. This is unacceptable to us. Our nurses and our community have empowered us to stand up for what is right. We hope management will make the right decision and reach a settlement."
4. According to the union, nurses have proposed a staffing plan that calls for charge nurses, with exceptions, to not have patient assignments or limited assignments, allowing them to help other nurses and effectively coordinate care.
5. David Phelps, president and CEO of Berkshire Health Systems, and Diane Kelly, DNP, RN, COO of BMC, addressed this issue in a letter sent to staff Feb. 6.
They wrote: "Our current practice and goal is to never schedule a charge nurse/clinical team leader for a patient assignment and to avoid that event whenever we reasonably can. However, as we all know, the work demands on each of us change from day-to-day and even over the course of a single day because of unexpected circumstances, including spikes in patient census, unusual changes in patient acuity and unscheduled absences of our colleagues. Of course, those unpredictable events affect the registered nursing realm of work as well. Accordingly, fixing in stone a highly restrictive patient assignment limitation for charge nurses/clinical team leaders is not a demand that we can prudently accept."
6. The one-day strike could still be averted if both sides reach an agreement after the next bargaining session scheduled for Feb. 13. Hospital officials said they hope this happens but are still preparing for the planned walkout. Like the October strike, BMC said it expects a second strike will cost $3 million to $4 million.
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