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BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – During a press conference Tuesday evening, the CWA area director called proposals that Catholic Health has put out to the press “misleading”
“The staffing language they’re proposing for us has what they classify as “wiggle room” – the language we’re looking for is iron-clad,” CWA area director Debora Hayes said during the 5:30 p.m. conference. “We’ve had experiences before where a little ‘wiggle room’ leads to an hour of not meeting ratios, which leads to four hours of not meeting ratios, and then a whole shift of not meeting ratios – we’re here for a reason and that reason is fixing staffing issues.”
On Monday, Catholic Health released a document containing its latest proposal to the press, which includes adding 250 new employees.
Hayes said that that proposal to add new employees didn’t help when the union was in negotiations with Catholic Health in 2016.
“They hit that number, and once they hit it, things deteriorated down to conditions worse than they were when we started negotiations,” Hayes added.
The strike has been going on since Oct. 1.
“This isn’t about playing games – [Catholic Health] knows what we need, and it’s in their power to put it on the table,” Hayes said.
“More or less disheartened, we really thought that this contract was going to be good, and we’d be back in the hospital,” said Chris Anderson who’s a registered nurse at Mercy Hospital. “Get this over with and let us get back to the hospital where we need to be and that’s where we all want to be. They’re holding it up, it is not the union, right now it’s the hospital holding it up.”
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