Enumclaw nurses picket over pay, staffing as CHI Franciscan aligns with other provider
Nurses at an Enumclaw hospital launched an informational picket Wednesday as contract negotiations continue into their seventh month.
The rally at CHI Franciscan’s St. Elizabeth Hospital aimed to highlight the staff’s issues, including wages and benefits, patient care and staffing.
The union also is calling attention to CHI Franciscan’s role in a new corporate operating structure finalized earlier this year.
On Feb. 1, CHI (Catholic Health Initiatives) and Dignity Health aligned to form nonprofit CommonSpirit Health, with headquarters in Chicago. The new corporate alignment includes CHI Franciscan’s health system among more than 700 care sites and 142 hospitals, as well as virtual care services, home health services and living communities in 21 states.
In a news release this week, SEIU Healthcare 1199NW said that the union’s 124 registered nurses at St. Elizabeth’s “are advocating for safe staffing levels, affordable health insurance, and wages that will recruit and retain qualified staff.”
The union has been in talks with CHI Franciscan since May. The SEIU local represents more than 30,000 nurses and health care workers in Washington state and Montana.
“Rather than listening to their concerns, executives have rejected staffing improvements and proposed increasing health care costs which are already a financial burden for many nurses, especially those with children under their insurance,” Local 1199NW said in its release.
Cary Evans, CHI Franciscan’s vice president for communications and government affairs, told The News Tribune in a statement: “We value our nurses and are committed to providing a quality work environment with competitive wages and benefits that attract and retain the very best.”
The union also has turned to social media, introducing the hashtag #ProtectStElizabethPatients, as well as distributing leaflets and window signs, among other action.
SEIU Healthcare 1199NW also held a similar rally Nov. 20 at Highline Medical Center in Burien. Nurses and caregivers at that site have been in contract negotiations since June.
CHI, Dignity Health become CommonSpirit
CHI Franciscan’s facilities in Washington state, including St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma and St. Anthony in Gig Harbor, are part of CommonSpirit Health’s Organized Health Care Arrangement (OHCA) — its system of health care providers. City MD/Franciscan Urgent Care services also are part of the OHCA.
At the time of the merger, Lloyd Dean, one of the combined ministry’s two CEOs, said in the announcement: “We didn’t combine our ministries to get bigger, we came together to provide better care for more people.”
CommonSpirit Health’s website emphasizes that “both health systems have a long, proud legacy of serving all people in need, especially those who’ve been made vulnerable by poverty, age, and other hardships. CommonSpirit Health is continuing these legacies by actively advocating for positive social change.”
The union contends that while CommonSpirit Health is the largest nonprofit health system in the country by operating revenue, the nurses in Enumclaw are facing increasingly difficult working conditions with understaffing driven by noncompetitive wages.
“They just keep chipping away. Even things that have been in the contract before, the way they are defining them now has changed. It’s all about money for them, but for us it’s about care and taking care of those who live here,” said Jeanne Oden, who works as a registered nurse in the family birth center at St. Elizabeth and lives in Enumclaw.
Oden, who participated in Wednesday’s rally, told The News Tribune there are “staff openings in every single department.”
“They keep changing staffing matrices and saying we can take more patients, so we’re all working 12-hour shifts, and you don’t get 30 minutes when you can get off your feet without responding to a call light,” she said.
Representatives for the two sides last met Dec. 2 and will return to the bargaining table Dec. 9.
“We respect the collective bargaining process and as we move forward with ongoing negotiations, patients at St. Elizabeth can expect to receive uninterrupted, quality care,” Evans told The News Tribune on Wednesday.
This story was originally published December 5, 2019 at 6:25 AM.
