Granted, we haven’t been sitting in the many negotiation sessions between the Baystate Franklin Medical Center and its nurses union, but you would think there would be a better way to settle a contract dispute.
The nurses and hospital have been at loggerheads since November 2016 and have now undergone two one-day strikes that were turned into two three-day lockouts by the hospital and reportedly cost a total of $2 million for replacement nurses and security costs.
If in fact that number is accurate, it seems unfortunate and counterproductive that things have come to this point.
The union says the main issue in the strike earlier this month is staffing levels and related patient safety concerns. Other issues, like health insurance and overtime also topped the nurses’ agenda, but while those two core issues are not settled, the nurses have said they are closer to agreements over them.
The Greenfield chapter of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, which represents the nearly 200 Franklin nurses, has pointed to the ability of Baystate Franklin’s parent nonprofit, Baystate Health, to settle a contract dispute with its Westfield affiliate, Baystate Noble, as proof hospital administrators could reach agreement in Greenfield if they wanted.
Ironically, Baystate administrators have used Baystate Noble’s settlement to assert the opposite conclusion: that Greenfield nurses are being unreasonable holdouts. They have even suggested that the state union leaders have slow-walked the local contract talks to somehow support a hospital staffing referendum in November.
We notice Baystate administrators in their public statements are trying to be both sympathetic to their own nurses but critical of the nurses union. That’s a tricky needle to thread, but they’ve tried.
“We look forward to the return of our nurse colleagues. They are a critical part of our team,” interim Baystate Franklin President Ron Bryant said as the recent lockout wound down.
Earlier in the day the hospital’s Senior Vice President Jane Albert beat that drum more loudly.
“The ongoing campaign of negative misinformation being waged by the union is destructive to not only a critical health care resource, it is also disrespectful to our employees … ”
The nurse leaders, of course, dispute they are using misinformation.
“We’re nurses,” Jillian Cycz rebutted. “We tell the truth.”
But Albert has leveled her criticism at the state union, saying union maneuvering “devalues the work and commitment of our employees and the care they provide each and every day to our community.”
So, finally, something everyone can all agree on: we value the hard work and commitment of the nurses — the men and women who pull shifts day and night at the hospital, when they aren’t striking or being locked out — the talented and hardworking people in scrubs who provide quality care to the sick in our community every day.
Now, can we build on that, and can we get back to the bargaining table, set aside the political posturing and gamesmanship, and reach across the gulf to that common ground that everyone knows has to be there somewhere?