Kaiser Permanente?s Los Angeles Medical Center?s more than 1,000
nurses walked out from their job on Wednesday.
Sounds of unity could be heard and seen on Sunset Boulevard,
as drivers blared their horns while members of the National Union of Healthcare
Workers paraded in front of the hospital. The Union
had warned the Kaiser administration, weeks ago, of their intention to stage a
one-day strike.
Nurses revealed that they have been negotiating a new contract with Kaiser
for more than a year now. They claim
that the hospital has denied them their raises and benefits that were clearly
stated in the previous contract.
Irma Dufelmeier, a Critical care nurse assigned in the kidney dialysis unit,
explained the strike was no just about money and benefits. The nursing staff is
also calling for more auxiliary help.
Dufelmeier said: ?Sometimes nurses
will forgo their break or one nurse will take care of four ICU patients and
that?s unacceptable. We?re jeopardizing the safety of the patients and
also the professional licensure of the registered nurse.?
Working in the cardiac surgery unit ?for 30 years now ? is Carol Short
who believes championing for her patients should be the utmost priority in her
to-do list.
?Nurses are the front line advocates
for our patients. We have to make sure that patient care is our
hospital?s first priority, so that?s what we?re doing,? Short said, explaining
why she was hitting the bricks.
Wednesday?s march marked the first time in more than two decades that nurses
at Kaiser?s Los Angeles Medical Center
walked out and while the nurses wore red shirts and waved placards outside, you?d
wonder who was giving care to the patients inside.
Dufelmeier revealed that management and educators substituted for the
24-hour gap in regular nursing coverage. She added most of the patients she
gives care to were generous enough to extend their support for the nurses?
one-day strike.
?We have a patient who told me she
has an appointment today but she skipped it and picked up a picket sign and she
marched with us all day long,? Dufelmeier narrated.
The staffing concerns picketers expounded are not exclusive to the Kaiser
facility. Noemi Aguirre, a USC-University Hospital respiratory
therapist, joined to support her union colleagues.
?We?ve also been faced with the same adversity from management.
Basically they?ve taken away the rights we have now that we fought for in
on our old contracts,? Aguirre recounted.
The contract of NUHW with USC-University Hospital will be
terminated at the end of March and as Aguirre have related, talks have
been going on since August.
The union showed no inclination to picket outside the USC hospital at this
point in time.
If Wednesday?s strike have any effect, whatsoever, in the contract
negotiations between Kaiser and the NUHW nurses, it is still quite unclear what
would transpire. However one thing is certain, nurses at the Los Angeles Medical Center will return to
their regularly scheduled duties starting at 6 a.m. the next day - caring for
patients who supported their cause.