Professionals at Temple University Hospital and its satellite campuses — the Jeanes Campus and the Fox Chase Cancer Center — unionized last month, joining several other TUH staff unions that have formed in the last year.
The Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals and the Committee of Interns and Residents Service Employees International Union, which other Temple Health unions have formed with before, reported complaints about working long hours and the lack of staff retention from TUH administration.
Resident physicians and fellows at Temple University Hospitals voted 425-11 to unionize alongside the Committee of Interns and Residents on Jan. 10. CIR has also unionized with the University of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Einstein Healthcare Network.
“We expected CIR would approach our Residents and Fellows and they’ve done that,” a spokesperson for TUH wrote in a statement to The Temple News. “We have a long and extensive history working with many different unions. We are committed to working with CIR within our ability to maintain financial stability to provide our patients and community with the high-quality care that they expect and deserve today and in the years ahead.”
Similarly, PASNAP ratified its first contract at the Fox Chase Cancer Center on May 28, 2024, which included more than 500 nurses and technical specialists at the oncology center.
Since then, the Fox Chase union has been working on safe staffing, nurse and physician retention rates and preventing staff from being overworked. However, members have faced pushback from the administration in negotiations regarding the wage scale for workers, said Diane Creitz, a senior clinical research educator. The union later held an official picket on Jan. 23 to urge administration to invest in its staff.
PASNAP members proposed a wage scale based on experience after attempts by their administration to introduce a direct-indirect experience scale for wages. This means rather than paying employees for all their years of experience, administration will fix it to their specific position.
Direct experience and indirect experience define the number of years an individual worked directly with patients versus years worked in roles that support the field. For a nurse who worked with patients directly for 10 years and then decides to train new hires for the next five years, the hospital would count 10 years of direct and five years of indirect experience — not a total of 15 years experience.
Another issue expressed by PASNAP and CIR are the hospital staff’s long shifts. Due to the high volume of patients at Fox Chase Cancer, staff are often working overtime and exhausted, Creitz and a CIR spokesperson both said.
“There are times where I have been expected to work over 12 hours per day for 6 days a week, as the sole first call provider, caring for over 30 patients with cancer,” said Tammarah Sklarz, a hematology oncology fellow at Fox Chase, in a speech at a CIR campaign.
Depending on their manager, a staff member may have to clock out and work unpaid, Creitz said.
“Nobody should have to feel like they can’t finish their work in a day and then clock out and not get paid for it,” Creitz said.
Temple Health did not respond to The Temple News’ request for comment regarding the unions’ claims of working overtime without proper pay.
Nearly one in five healthcare workers have quit their job since 2020, according to a September 2023 report by Definitive Health, a commercial healthcare company. The research shows that by the end of 2022, 145,000 healthcare workers had left the profession.
Educating staff like Creitz said they have seen professionals leave Fox Chase for competitors with better opportunities and pay. In this past year, Creitze has onboarded 40 new staff to their total staff of 80, she said.
Many staffers anticipate transferring to different departments to ease the mental stress of their jobs or leaving entirely to work for a TUH competitor that offers better pay, said Creitz, who was an oncology registered nurse prior to joining the education department.
“We are a national comprehensive cancer center and we work for Temple, who is a large corporation,” Creitz said. “I think that we should be recognized monetarily for sure, and meet our competitors in the area at least.”
Be the first to comment