ST. LOUIS — Registered nurses at SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital on Friday announced that they are striking for 48 hours during the last week of December in protest of "union-busting" and outsourcing of RN jobs by the hospital's management.
Last week, nurses voted to give the union's bargaining team the ability to call the strike. According to a news release from the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United, nurses on Friday gave their employer advance notice of the strike, which will take place from Dec. 27 at 7 a.m. to Dec. 29 at 6:59 a.m.
“Management has refused to seriously consider or compromise on our proposals regarding SSM’s outsourcing of nurse jobs,” Jessica Tulk, an emergency department RN, stated in a release announcing the strike. “We need to hire full-time union staff nurses who are invested in the community and our patients.”
The announcement is the latest labor action by nurses at the hospital. In September, nurses staged a 24-hour strike to demand better pay, safer working conditions and improved staff retention.
In July, nurses picketed outside the hospital to draw attention to “unsafe working conditions and more violence among patients and their families” because of the staffing shortages.
Nurse Hadas Becker in July said traveling nurses are coming in to help, making up to three times more than local staff.
"They don't know our systems. They don't know our doctors. They don't know where things are and we spend a lot of our time having to help them out and we want core staff that knows what we’re doing," she said.
National Nurses Organizing Committee has represented the nurses at St. Louis University Hospital since 2012.
