Seton nurses strike!
Registered nurses at AHMC Seton Medical Center (Seton) in Daly City, Calif., held a two-day strike on Wednesday, June 22, and Thursday, June 23, in response to the AHMC’s failure to address critical and persistent patient care issues, chronic supply problems, the shuttering of vital services, and the failure of management to consistently attend scheduled bargaining sessions.
“I have worked at Seton for 22 years and enough is enough,” said Michelle Kubota, a registered nurse in the medical surgical unit. “As a nurse, I have a duty to advocate for my patients. As the hospital administration has refused to respond to our concerns, we feel as if we have no other option than to strike. The management at our hospital is failing our patients by failing to value and respect the nurses. We are working without proper supplies, without appropriate staff, and nurses are being asked to do two or more jobs at once. Everytime we have to search for supplies or are forced to take on additional duties, we are taken away from our most important duty, that of caring for our patients. Our patients deserve far better.”
“We are seeing experienced nurses leave our hospital after decades of service to our community,” said Emily Toaitiiti, a registered nurse who has worked at Seton for 21 years. “We have new nurses doing their best to train new nurses, but that is not fair to either nurse and certainly not optimal for our patients. We need to do everything we can to retain and recruit experienced nurses who can help mentor our younger nurses and who are committed to staying at our hospital and fighting to ensure that our patients get the highest quality of care.”
Click left or right to navigate through images, or click on image to be taken to Flickr album.
Nurses have been in contract negotiations with AHMC since December 2021. AHMC management is impeding any real progress by refusing to address the nurses’ concerns and by canceling scheduled meetings at the last minute.
Further fomenting the nurses’ decision to strike is that Seton has closed two hospital units that serve vulnerable elderly patients from across Northern California. In March, AHMC permanently shuttered its skilled nursing facility that provided essential care to elderly and other patients who were unable to be discharged and still need a certain level of nursing care. Many of these patients were transferred to another unit 30 miles away, which places an additional burden on family and friends who visit and support their loved ones.