FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 9, 2011
 
RNs vow to hold the line on healthcare—nurses’ kids should be able to receive care at CHO
 
Children’s Hospital registered nurses will return to the bedside Tuesday morning, concluding a five-day strike over healthcare cuts. The nearly 800 Children’s RNs are members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United.
 
Under management’s current proposals, health benefits and retirement health would be at the bottom of Bay Area private hospitals. The healthcare cuts would make it prohibitively expensive for nurses to bring their own children to get care at the hospital where they work, which is the central issue in dispute.

“We hope that the hospital now understands how important it is for nurses to be able to bring their own children here for care and will return to the bargaining table to resolve this remaining issue,” said Martha Kuhl, an RN who works with children with cancer and is on the nurse negotiating team. Its time for all of us to move forward and return to what we all do best—provide quality care to our patients and our community.”

The nurses have been working without a contract since July 13. The CNA nurse negotiating team has made itself available to resume talks, after management unilaterally cancelled the last bargaining session scheduled on Tuesday, April 26.  The hospital has not responded to the nurses’ request to meet.
 
“I have had many opportunities to work closer to home, but I love working at Children’s,” said  Aday Godinez-Robinson, a pediatric intensive care unit nurse, living in Fairfield, who has worked at Children’s for 23 years and is a single mother of two children with chronic asthma “We provide an expert level of pediatric care that is unparalleled to any other hospital that I have worked in my professional career, and I always felt secure having my children managed by my  nurse and doctor colleagues. In light of threatened cost hikes for this plan, I moved to Kaiser as have many of my colleagues. “
 
Data supplied by the Children's Hospital management itself to the U.S. government and state agencies belies the hospital's claims of money woes, documenting instead a hospital with considerable resources. The hospital made $18.4 million according to its 2009 IRS form 990, and $18.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2010. (Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development data 12/10)