Hundreds of Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital nurses joined the picket line outside the New Brunswick facility Friday morning to send a clear message to administrators: They’re burned out and need relief.
The unionized nurses are striking for the first time since 2006.
“I’m two years in and I feel like I’ve been doing this for 10 years already,” 31-year-old nurse Jeffrey Martin said. “There’s many nurses that have less than two years experience on my floor that are already planning their exit strategy because they’re so sick and tired of having this many patients.”
The United Steelworkers Local No. 4-200, which represents the 1,700 nurses at the hospital, is demanding it set safer staffing ratios to alleviate nurses from caring for too many patients at once. The union also wants the hospital to freeze workers’ insurance premiums for the length of the three-year contract and increase wages.
Nurses say during an average 12-hour shift, they’re often caring for six patients. RWJ University Hospital is a level one trauma center, meaning it treats the sickest patients in the region, often sent by other hospitals that can’t provide the same level of care.
“At the most I can spend two hours in the entire day with them and that’s not including my lunch break, if I get one, my bathroom break, if I get one, and the two seconds I get to sip water, if I’m able to,” nurse Kerry Cronin said as she stood on the picket line on Friday.
Hospital spokesperson Wendy Gottsegen said it was disappointing the union had taken “this extreme action.” She said the hospital was open to continuing negotiating in good faith.
“It did not and should not have come to this. This is not a strike of necessity and could have been avoided had the union not been so intent on this outcome. No one benefits from a strike, least of all, our nurses,” she said in a statement.
The nurses’ contract expired in June and both sides have been negotiating since April. Since then,…
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