St. Vincent nurses in Massachusetts in fourth week of strike for safe staffing
Nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts are entering the fourth week of strike action. St. Vincent is owned by Tenet Healthcare, a Dallas, Texas-based conglomerate that has so far spent at least $22 million to hire strikebreaking replacement nurses. After a series of federally mediated negotiations, the nurses, represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, took their demand for safe ratios and patient care to the picket line on March 8 .
Roughly 700 nurses maintain the picket in shifts. Two entrances, one to the parking garage and to the loading docks, have become hotspots. Last week, the hospital installed two surveillance towers to monitor both entrances 24/7, under the pretext of maintaining safety. Worcester police officers, paid for by the hospital to keep the entrances open at a rate of $30,000 a day, installed a surveillance camera of their own.
Striking nurses at St. Vincent Hospital starved of strike pay by MNA
Nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, are in the fourth week of an open-ended strike, demanding safe staffing ratios. Having walked out on March 8, 10 days after issuing management a strike notice, they have sacrificed nearly four weeks of pay.
The Dallas, Texas-based corporate owner, Tenet Healthcare, has so far spent $22 million for strikebreakers, public relations, and police details, and recently installed surveillance towers, in what has become a one-sided war of attrition, as the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) union seeks to isolate and wear down nurses, depriving them of strike pay.
St. Vincent Hospital nurses in Worcester, Mass. in second week of strike for safe staffing ratios
Nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, have entered their second week of an ongoing strike. They are demanding that Tenet Healthcare, which owns St. Vincent Hospital, agree to establish strict ratios for safer patient and workplace conditions. The roughly 700 nurses on the picket line, members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, have been joined by other health care workers, including personal care assistants (PCA), pulmonary technicians and housekeepers, who face similarly dangerous conditions at the hospital.
On February 10 the nurses gave 89 percent approval to authorize a strike. Negotiations resumed the next day but quickly stalled again, as hospital management refused to address their central concern: assignment limits of four patients to every nurse on medical-surgical floors.
MNA-underage girl marriage reports denied
Local organization had lodged an FIR with the Chitral City police station on February 16
PHOTO: FILE
PESHAWAR:
Chitral police have submitted its enquiry report to the Commission on the status of women in which it claimed that the reports of the marriage of an underage girl Safia Ayaz to the 60 year old Salahuddin in Chitral are baseless.
A local organization Dawat-e-Azeemat Chitral had lodged an FIR with the Chitral City police station on February 16 in which it stated that the marriage ceremony of an underage girl is being solemnized with an aged person of Balochistan (MNA Salahuddin Ayubi) through a middle man.
PPP parliamentarian rebuffs woman MNA’s accusations
Agha Rafiullah laments National Assembly’s procedure for following such requests
PHOTO: National Assembly website
ISLAMABAD:
Lamenting the modus operandi for ensuring lower house decorum, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) lawmaker Agha Rafiullah on Friday rejected a fellow woman parliamentarian’s accusations of using insulting words for her during a session of the assembly on February 2.
Ruling party MNA Begum Shaheen Saifullah Toru had filed a written complaint to NA Speaker Asad Qaiser against the PPP MP for making alleged derogatory remarks during house proceedings.
The letter reads, during the Feb 2 NA session Rafiullah showed “behaviour, completely unbecoming” of an MNA.