On the picket line

UMass nurses win 5-hour strike

It took only five hours—after a marathon 24-hour negotiating session—for registered nurses at the UMass Medical Center’s University campus to reach a tentative agreement on Oct. 26.

The nurses were successful in fighting contract concessions that would have cut wages and benefits by upwards of $8,000. Not only is their defined benefit pension plan intact but they preserved affordable health care benefits for both full-time and part-time nurses. The three-year contract also contains a 15-step salary scale with 5 percent annual step raises, as well as a cost-of-living adjustment in each year of the contract.

“It was the strength and unity of our union that has allowed us to push forward to such a successful settlement,” said Kathie Logan, RN, chair of the 830-member UMass bargaining unit of the Massachusetts Nurses Association. “This is a win for all parties, and the biggest winners will be our patients.”

Elsewhere in Massachusetts, the 2,400 registered nurses at Brigham & Women’s Hospitals in Boston are set to vote on a strike on Nov. 13. They have been negotiating a new contract since July. Their contract expired Sept. 30 but has been extended as negotiations continue.

Management is offering the nurses only a 1.5 percent pay hike, though the hospital’s profits increased by more than 75 percent in 2005 and by another $42 million through the second quarter of 2006. Management has the audacity to ask the nurses to pay for the raise by cutting their sick time benefits.

Campus workers at the University of Vermont and at Brown University won their first union contracts, bringing them closer to a livable wage.

On Oct. 11, members of UE Local 267 ratified a three-year contract guaranteeing all UVM workers a wage increase of 4 percent retroactive to July 1 and at least 4 percent in each of the next two years. All current workers will be making a minimum of $11.46 per hour by the third year of the contract. The goal, which is supported by students, faculty, staff and the community, is “to implement a full Livable Wage for all UVM workers,” reported a Jobs with Justice press release.

The food service workers at Brown, represented by SEIU Local 615, recently won a 3.5 percent wage increase for each year of the three-year contract as well as health care benefits for all workers and no increase in health care premiums. Strong student support organized by the Student Labor Alliance was seen as critical to the workers’ victory.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the AFL-CIO and other groups sent a petition on Nov. 1 to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights charging that the United States and five state governments have failed to protect basic workplace rights for immigrant workers guaranteed under international law. The commission is part of the 35-nation Organization of American States.

The petition charges that a 2002 Supreme Court ruling, known as Hoffman v. National Labor Relations Board, denies basic protection of labor laws to millions of undocumented immigrant workers in violation of universal human rights principles like equal protection before the law. It cites such violations as no compensation for workplace injuries, inability to hold an employer responsible for an injury at work and workplace discrimination and exploitation.