Nurses Organize in Fresno

Nurses Organize in Fresno
By Mike Rhodes

Registered nurses at Saint Agnes Hospital in Fresno announced today that they were turning in a petition to join the California Nurses Association (CNA). According to Don Neilson, a representative for CNA, a majority of nurses have signed the petition to join the union. There are about 900 RN’s at Saint Agnes.

Standing in front of the hospital today, some of the RN’s talked about why they are joining the union. “We are committed to our patients and our community to deliver the best care possible,” said Stacee Nelson, RN. “Having the CNA as our union will help us to achieve that. Since Trinity took over, Saint Agnes is no longer what it used to be. It’s our hospital and we are taking it back.”

“Patient safety is my primary reason why I called CNA for help,” said Wayne Hart, RN. “The safety of our patients are compromised almost every day. I have raised this issue to management but it has fallen in deaf ears. Our only option now is to win a voice at work by having a union so we can take care of patients the way we should with enough time and help that we need.”

“In telemetry,” said Beth Legaspi, RN, “the safe staffing ratios are constantly being violated and we have less nursing assistants to help the RN’s. We want CNA so that we will have a mechanism to enforce the staffing ratio law.”

“I have committed in my profession to heal and provide excellent patient care for people of the central valley community, not to make profits,” sand Susan Whitfield, RN. “Trinity Health through our CEO made the announcement recently of layoffs and said that we have to reduce our expenses. However, management is wasting patient care resources to labor consultants whose sole task is to dissuade us from supporting our union.”

About 50 nurses and their supporters tried to deliver the petition to Matthew Abraham, Chief Operating Officer of Saint Agnes Medical Center. Security guards scrambled to stop the group from entering the hospital. After negotiations, four nurses were escorted to his office. Not surprisingly, Abraham was not available to meet with the nurses. A rally was later held in front of the hospital.

CNA is the nation’s largest and fastest growing organizations of RN’s with 80,000 members from coast to coast, and also the largest organization in Catholic hospitals across the U.S. representing 17,000 RN’s in 38 Catholic hospitals.