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Source: Massachusetts Nurses Association

We are firmly resolved to maintain our strike until Tenet comes to the table and agrees to a contract that provides the necessary staffing improvements to ensure the safety of our patients” — Conclusion of MNA petition

WORCESTER, Mass., July 1, 2021 – Next week, a delegation of striking nurses from Tenet Healthcare-owned St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Mass., will travel to the corporation’s headquarters in Dallas to make a direct appeal to the corporate executives to finally respond to the nurses’ call for safer staffing for safer patient care, and end what is now the longest nurse strike nationally in more than a decade.

“After months of fruitless efforts trying to convince St. Vincent Hospital’s administration to provide us with the resources we need to protect our patients and our community, we have decided to travel to Dallas, Texas and speak directly to the corporate executives who have the ultimate control over the safety and quality of care at our hospital,” said Marlena Pellegrino, RN, longtime nurse at St. Vincent Hospital and co-chair of the nurses local bargaining unit with the Massachusetts Nurses Association.

“Prior to and during the pandemic, our nurses, patients and community suffered greatly as a result of Tenet Healthcare’s failure to provide the staffing and resources we needed to keep our patients safe,” Pellegrino continued. “Tenet failed to safely staff St. Vincent Hospital while exposing nurses and other caregivers to higher risk of COVID-19 due to lack of proper personal protective equipment. While Tenet pocketed more than $500 million in profits using pandemic relief money, our patients suffered preventable falls and bedsores, dangerous delays in receiving medications and other treatments.”

The nurses, members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, along with other caregivers from Tenet facilities in California, who are represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers, as well as healthcare and labor activists from across the country, will hold a press conference on July 7 at noon, which will mark the 122^nd day nurses will be on strike against Tenet.

Nurses are bringing a giant, 16-foot-long petition signed by more than 700 striking nurses and will attempt to deliver the petition to Tenet’s CEO Ron Rittenmeyer. They will also call out Tenet for its blatant misuse of more than $2.6 billion in taxpayer-supported pandemic funding from the CARES Act stimulus package – funding that was supposed to be used by hospitals to provide PPE, staffing and other resources to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, yet in Tenet’s hands was used to fund corporate expansion, pay down debt, buy back stock for executives and, in the words of CEO Rittenmyer as reported in the Dallas Morning News in April of 2020, “to maximize our cash position.”

The nurses’ petition drive and decision to go to Dallas was launched last month, after Tenet took the extreme step of threatening to permanently replace the nurses, a move that outraged the St. Vincent nurses, as well as other nursing organizations, social justice, and labor organizations across the nation. The nurses remain undaunted. The conclusion of their petition states what is really behind this strike and why so many support the nurses’ efforts:

“We are irreplaceable and are firmly resolved to maintain our strike until Tenet comes to the table and agrees to a contract that provides the necessary staffing improvements to ensure the safety of our patients. For nurses, this strike has nothing to do with profit and loss, for us, our patients are our friends and neighbors and any mistakes we make due to understaffing have names attached to them, with real life and death consequences. We will not let them down.”

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