Published: October 27, 2007 10:48 pm         

Strike talks to resume

ARH, nurses meet mediator Monday at bargaining table

Although labor and management remain divided on the issues that led to a nursing strike against Appalachian Regional Healthcare, both sides will meet with a federal mediator Monday in Lexington, Ky., for more collective bargaining talks.

“Our goal is to go and negotiate in good faith and get a resolution to all of this,” said Rue Hairston, state economic and general welfare chair of the West Virginia Nurses Association. “We all need to work for the good of our patients. They didn’t deserve to be put in the middle of all this. ARH needs to come together with us so we can work for the good of the patients.”

ARH officials say they have received no written counter proposal to the contract voted down Sept. 27 by nurses in West Virginia and Kentucky.

“ARH has presented three proposals, and one last, best and final offer to the union,” said Rocco Massey, Community CEO of Beckley-ARH and Summers County-ARH. “The union has yet to give us anything in writing about what they are after.”

“We had been up all night on Sept. 25 working on counter proposals,” Hairston said. “ARH announced they were giving us their last, best and final offer the next day. After we voted that down, we still had four more days to negotiate, but ARH walked away.”

Members of the West Virginia and Kentucky nurses associations walked off the job at all nine ARH facilities after their old contract expired at midnight Sept. 30.

An Oct. 19 meeting brought a federal mediator and representatives from ARH and the WVNA/KNA together to look for common ground and plan further talks.

“Some of the media has made it sound like we refused to negotiate during that meeting,” Hairston said. “There were no negotiations. The federal mediator brought us together and set dates for future meetings.”

By a 2-to-1 margin, registered nurses rejected an ARH contract proposal offering $10 in raises over the next four years. Money, they say, has never been the issue.

“This is about patient care and mandatory overtime,” said Ocie Helton, president of Local 201 at Beckley-ARH. “We want to be able to take care of our patients, and we can’t do that effectively if we are having to work long shifts and we’re tired and worn out from all the overtime.”

Massey said work records show the overtime is due to high rates of absenteeism among workers and that overtime is nearly always in proportion to the amount of absenteeism during any given work period.

“The maximum amount of overtime in a 14-day period is five hours. Ironically, that is exactly how many sick hours fall into that same time period,” Massey said.

If talks Monday are to be successful, the union needs to present written proposals, not generalized verbal statements, Massey said.

“I would like to be optimistic about the outcome of Monday’s meeting, but the union needs to give us something in writing so that the negotiations aren’t as one-sided as they have been,” Massey said.

Hairston said she is hopeful about the resumption of bargaining talks.

“I’m very optimistic. Going back to the table and talking is the place to start,” she said.

— E-mail: bdavis@register-herald.com