Nurses at MemorialCare Long Beach Medical Center and Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital have unanimously cast a vote of no confidence in hospital leadership, according to a Friday, July 18, news release.
The vote, according to the news release from the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United, came after “repeated bad faith bargaining practices by hospital executives, who have continued to disregard failures in patient care standards.”
MemorialCare officials, in a Friday, July 18 statement, said the safety of its patients and workers is top priority, while arguing that the union’s no-confidence vote is a tactic in ongoing labor contract negotiations.
Both Long Beach hospitals are well-respected institutions, both locally and, by reputation, nationally.
The nearly 120-year-old Long Beach Medical Center has been repeatedly recognized as a top-performing hospital — both overall and in specific discliples, such as obstetrics and gynecology, and colon cancer surgery — by U.S. News & World Report and Newsweek. Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital, which has received similar honors over the years, treats more than 13,000 children annually, whose families come from all over the region and beyond, according to its website.
But despite all that success, there has been escalating tension between MemorialCare and the nurses union as they bargain for a new contract — with the no-confidence vote the latest increase.
The California Nurses Association, which represents more than 2,000 registered nurses at both Long Beach hospitals, held a one-day strike in May, just a week after MemorialCare had announced a wave of layoffs impacting 115 workers locally.
The union delivered that strike notice following 15 bargaining sessions with representatives of the hospitals, and without either party having declared an impasse in negotiations, according to a previous press release from MemorialCare.
During the two previous contract negotiations between the hospitals and CNA — both of which successfully concluded in an agreement without a strike being called — the negotiating teams held 41 and 21 bargaining sessions, respectively, before an agreement was reached, MemorialCare said at the time.
“We are aware of the tactics being deployed by leadership of the California Nurses Association in an attempt to influence negotiations around a new collective bargaining agreement. We have deep respect for our dedicated nurses,” Richele Steele, the company’s vice president of communications and public relations said Friday. “However, these negotiating tactics and biased allegations by union leadership will not distract our hospitals from our mission of providing the highest quality care to our patients and the communities we serve.”
The vote of no confidence, CNA said, represents a “call to urgent action and accountability,” and a demand for “fair contracts that ensure safe staffing and high quality patient care.”
Some issues Long Beach nurses have been dealing with at the two hospitals, CNA said, include unsafe staffing levels across units and incidents of workplace violence that have continued to happen without a comprehensive prevention plan in place.
“Nurses have had enough,” Stephanie Jobe, a registered nurse at Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital, said in the news release. “We are committed to our patients and our profession, but we cannot continue to work under leadership that ignores our safety warnings, stonewalls us at the bargaining table and punishes transparency.”
MemorialCare, Steele added, takes the safety of patients and employee safety seriously.
“The safety of our care providers and patients is among our top priorities,” Steele said. “We remain firmly committed to bargaining in good faith and reaching an agreement with the union that is fair to our nurses and sustainable for the hospitals.”
The hospitals, MemorialCare officials said previously, are constantly evaluating and reviewing their processes to ensure that measures are meeting the demands of patients and constantly evaluating safety protocols.
“We have metal detectors in that (ER) area to assure that we have processes in places to screen patients and visitors,” MemorialCare official said previously, “and more importantly, we are going to meet the state requirements, or even exceed the demand for us to have metal detectors throughout our entire hospital by 2027.”
As for the no-confidence vote, CNA said it will share the results with the “relevant regulatory bodies,” adding that the union is “calling on community members, elected officials and patients to stand with them in demanding fair contracts that ensure safe staffing and high quality of patient care.”
MemorialCare had a productive negotiation session with the union today, Friday, July 18, according to Steele.
“(We) look forward to continuing constructive dialogue with the union’s representatives in upcoming sessions,” Steele said.
