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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the July 13, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------RHODE ISLAND
Hospital boss imposes arbitration to avert strike
By Michael Shaw
Providence, R.I.
An impending nurses' strike at Rhode Island Hospital was averted just before the July 1 deadline. Hospital President Joseph Amaral suppressed the looming strike. He invoked an unusual contract provision that gives management the right to call for binding arbitration when faced with a strike.
Amaral made the move after members of the United Nurses and Health Professionals union voted 1,226-76 against the bosses' final contract offer. Union members were prohibited from walking out.
Carrying signs reading "Keep quality alive" and "Safe staffing," 600 chanting nurses rallied outside the hospital July 1 to protest the move to arbitration.
UNAP President Linda McDonald denounced Amaral's decision, saying, "It is shameful that the hospital kept the entire state in suspense for the past week--causing enormous disruptions in our health-care system--simply so that it could try to browbeat its employees into accepting an unacceptable contract."
McDonald said she was confident the union would fare well in the arbitration process, and that the arbitrator would reject hospital management's "final-offer" contract language.
The union said that current contract provisions allowing mandatory overtime and wage scales below those of other area hospitals had made it difficult for Rhode Island Hospital to recruit personnel.
Understaffing has increased mandatory overtime, which nurses say forces them to work while dangerously exhausted.
The nurses' demands have gained wide public support.
The threatened strike on a busy holiday weekend sent shock waves through state government and the health-care industry. Rhode Island Hospital houses the region's only Level 1 trauma center. It's also home to the busiest emergency department in New England.
The hospital bosses prepared for a strike by reducing patient intake by half. They hired extra security guards and recruited 200 scab nurses from Colorado. These were costly measures.
Commenting on the hospital's unwillingness to bargain in good faith, McDonald said, "They do everything to spend money, except at the bedside."
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