Sutter Nurses on 1-Day Strike for Patient Care
Today, some 4,500 RNs at eight Sutter Health hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area are holding a one-day strike to dramatize the highly profitable health care chain’s demand for more than 100 sweeping reductions in patient care and nurse standards and workplace conditions.
The nurses, members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United ( CNA/NNU ), offered to call off the strike if Sutter agreed to withdraw the concession demands.
Nurses also are protesting Sutter’s policy of deep cuts to patient services the corporation says are not sufficiently profitable. Those include such vital services as cancer screening for women and many services affecting children, seniors and the long-term disabled, as well as efforts to close hospitals in medically underserved communities.
CNA/NNU Co-President Zenei Cortez, RN, says Sutter has shown it is:
far more interested in amassing wealth than caring about community health or the nurses who provide care for the patients who are the base of Sutter’s huge profits. Sutter RNs will never accept a reduced voice to speak out for patients or erosion in their own standards.
