Ninety-five percent of the 2,250 unionized healthcare workers at Temple University Hospital voted Wednesday to organize a possible 10-day strike if they cannot come to a contract agreement with hospital leadership. The vote follows a picket outside of the hospital on Sept 23. organized by union nurses and other workers to raise awareness of unsafe working conditions, WHYY reported.
Temple University Hospital Nurses Association and Temple Allied Professionals, representing more than 1,000 of the 2,250 protest attendees, have been in contract negotiations with TUH’s administration since August and have been working without a contract since Sept. 30.
The union is holding a rally today at the American Nurses Credentialing Center National Magnet Conference at the Pennsylvania Convention Center to call attention to the on-going contract negotiations with TUH. The hospital achieved Magnet status, which indicates a hospital that provides a high-level of care, in January of 2019, yet they have still been facing staff shortages and unsafe working conditions, according to a PASNAP press release.
The union has set their demands for the hospital administration, yet they have not made any progress to meet the demands, wrote Mary Adamson, an Intensive Care Unit nurse and president of PASNAP, in a PASNAP press release.
“We have very reasonable offers on the table, chief among them a proposal that would ensure safe staffing in the hospital,” Adamson wrote. “That’s what we want. That’s what our patients want. That’s what a hospital that cares about patient outcomes should want. Yet management has refused even to respond to our good-faith proposal regarding staffing.”
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