Ronnie Polaneczky | MCP strike over standards a lesson for labor

Posted on Mon, Nov. 17, 2003

THERE'S SOMETHING riveting about the nursing strike at the Medical College of Pennsylvania.

This one ain't just about money or benefits.

It's about standards.

Let me ask you: When's the last time a strike in this city was about anything other than socking it to The Man, right in the wallet?

Whether they're schoolteachers who want better insurance or bus drivers hankering after a cushier retirement, organized labor nearly always walks the picket line in blatant self interest.

Nothing wrong with that. But it doesn't necessarily stir public support beyond a general feeling of empathy. Who doesn't want a fatter paycheck and juicier benefits?

But the MCP nurses - still on the picket line over the weekend - are using their moral authority as front-line caregivers to call attention to something we should all be worried about:

There aren't enough of them to go around.

Their hospital is so understaffed, they say, they are constantly forced to work overtime.

"I've seen nurses crying, exhausted, because they've just been told they can't go home because the next shift isn't covered," one MCP nurse told me.

And that scares them, since studies show that tired nurses are more likely to make errors than well-rested ones.

Money does figure in here somewhere, of course. MCP's just-expired nursing contract offered double-time pay to all nurses - whether full- or part-time - working these unscheduled shifts. Now, the hospital wants to pay time-and-a-half to full-time nurses forced to work additional hours, and straight time pay to part-time workers asked to do the same.

But nurses I spoke with said the extra money was their only insurance that staffing wouldn't go even lower than its current meager level, since MCP's bottom line might otherwise implode from all that double-time moola.

If the new pay scale is put into place, "they'll go even crazier" with mandatory overtime, says one MCP nurse.

So screw it all, she says - the forced overtime, and even the old double-time to fund it.

"We won't put patients or our own licenses at risk anymore."

To be fair to MCP, it's no secret that hospitals everywhere are chronically understaffed. For evidence, look no further than the brand-new health-care-recruiting TV commercial starring Ed Rendell - as a hairy-chested, scrub-wearing nurse.

And MCP administrators say their nurse vacancies are no worse than any other hospital's: They say they have 60 (though nurses say it's closer to 75), which they accommodate by closing floors, thereby reducing their total patient census.

But that measure, says the nurses' union leader, has been both ineffective and beside the point.

"If MCP says its staffing levels are no worse than anywhere else, then we've all gotten too used to a terrible situation," said Michael Bodisnky, executive director of Local 112 of the Office & Professional Employees International Union.

"Patient safety is at risk."

See, this is where MCP's nurses could win the PR battle of this war: They're actually advocating for something not solely for themselves, but also for us.

And it makes you wonder: What if organized workers did this more often - struck for improvements in areas that really matter to the people they serve?

What if schoolteachers struck for more federal money for their classrooms, not just for richer pension benefits?

What if social workers struck for bigger staffs, so that no foster child would slip through the cracks?

What if clergymen boycotted their own Sunday services until church leaders dealt with moral crises infecting their own ranks?

Why then, something might actually change.

And those workers might have more of our support when they strike for the things that matter only to them.

Like bigger paychecks and kick-ass benefits.

Send e-mail to polaner@phillynews.com

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