Kaiser nurses ratify contract, avert strike
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
Nurses voted late last night to accept a contract offer from Kaiser Medical Center, averting a strike at another of O'ahu's Big Five medical facilities.
The contract offers a 21 percent pay increase over three years, with additional benefits for more experienced nurses in the second and third years.
Scott Foster, spokesman for the Hawai'i Nurses Association, said the contract was ratified by "a strong margin." No additional details were released.
The agreement includes new staffing guidelines, a key issue for nurses across the state. Insufficient staffing results in an overworked nurses and poor patient care, the nurses have contended.
The 646 nurses at Kaiser will also get improved retirement benefits under the new contract.
Meanwhile, nurses at three other O'ahu hospitals — The Queen's Medical Center, Kuakini Medical Center and St. Francis Medical Center, remain on strike.
At St. Francis Medical Center, management has contacted a Mainland agency and will bring in replacement nurses to care for its kidney dialysis patients.
Hospital spokeswoman Maggie Jarrett announced the decision yesterday, after hospital officials met Friday night with a group of striking nurses in a failed attempt to bring the nurses off the picket lines to care for the patients.
No contract talks have been scheduled at St. Francis or at the two other O'ahu medical centers — Queen's and Kuakini — where nurses also remained on strike yesterday.
More than 1,400 nurses are maintaining picket lines at the three hospitals.
Nurses at Kapi'olani Medical Center voted last week to accept a contract offer from employers at that facility, although many of the nurses said they were dissatisfied with the agreement.
St. Francis cares for 1,000 dialysis patients statewide. Jarrett said last night that she did not know how may nurses would be brought in.
When negotiations began to break down and a strike seemed likely, the hospital announced it would not hire outside help, and would instead compensate for the lack of nurses by cutting each patient's dialysis time in half.
Non-union nurses worked 16 hour shifts to staff the shortened treatment schedules.
Last week, Jarrett said, nephrologist Jared Sugihara, head of the Renal Institute of the Pacific at St. Francis told hospital officials that he had serious concerns about the physical and psychological impact the abbreviated treatment program could have on patients.
The Kidney Foundation had also expressed concerns.
Dialysis patients on the abbreviated treatment schedules were told to go on emergency diets, restricting their intake of fluids, protein, salt and potassium.
In a court action and in a meeting Friday night, St. Francis tried to bring striking nurses off the picket lines to care for the dialysis patients.
Hawai'i Nurses Association director Sue Scheider said the nurses had proposed two weeks before the strike that a Patients First Committee review life-threatening situations such as organ transplant surgeries on a case-by-case basis, and bring nurses in off the picket line when no one else could provide safe care.
The nurses rejected the St. Francis proposal to bring picketers in to provide dialysis, saying the hospital should have hired replacement nurses or made other arrangements. Scheider said the hospital cut the dialysis regime even when sufficient nurses were available to provide care.
Because the Mainland nurses will be expensive, St. Francis will bring in only the number required to restore full dialysis treatments, Jarrett said.
Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2430 or kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.
