Protest Unfair Labor Practices and Mistreatment of Nurses as Baystate Franklin Medical Center Nurses Prepare to Strike on Friday, Oct. 5
SPRINGFIELD, Mass., Oct. 2, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Hundreds of registered nurses from across the commonwealth will picket and rally in front of Baystate Medical Center in Springfield on Oct. 3. The members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association are holding their annual convention this week in Springfield. Wednesday afternoon they will leave the convention to support the nurses at Baystate Franklin Medical Center and Baystate Visiting Nurses Association and Hospice of Springfield who have been attempting to gain a fair contract for 20 months. Nurses, joined by local community and labor leaders will be calling attention to Baystate Health System's engagement in a number of unfair labor practices, as well as to their demands for unreasonable concessions from the nurses, including proposals that will strip them of key union rights, will increase the dangerous use of overtime to staff the hospital and will discipline nurses for using legitimate sick time, thus forcing them to care for patients when they are ill.
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20060525/NETH016LOGO)
The demonstration comes just hours before the parties meet for the last scheduled negotiating session on Wednesday evening, and two days before the nurses at Baystate Franklin Medical Center have scheduled a one-day strike for Friday, October 5.
WHO: Hundreds of Nurse with Community and Labor Supporters
WHEN: Wednesday, October 3, 2012
2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
WHERE: In front of Baystate Medical Center
Corner of Chestnut and Springfield St., Springfield, MA
Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the largest professional health care organization and the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its 23,000 members advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public. The MNA is also a founding member of National Nurses United, the largest national nurses union in the United States with more than 170,000 members from coast to coast.
SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association