Nurses face emotional return to work
By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer
Now that the last labor contract has been ratified, three O'ahu hospitals and the 1,400 nurses who walked off the job seven weeks ago face a potentially emotional return to work.
Nurses at St. Francis Medical Center ratified a contract Sunday night that will give them an 18 percent raise over three years.
The St. Francis nurses were the last to settle a labor dispute that began when they, and nurses at Kuakini Medical Center, went on strike Dec. 2. Nurses at The Queen's Medical Center walked off their jobs the next day.
At St. Francis, some nurses in hospice or home care will return Thursday. But most of those assigned to their first shifts will be asked to report Friday after the last of the 30 replacement nurses leaves at 6:30 a.m, said hospital spokeswoman Maggie Jarrett.
Not all of the 330 nurses will return until patient levels rise at St. Francis, which had closed one wing during the strike, Jarrett said.
Before they can return, all nurses must take a reorientation class, as well as a class similar to an anger management class, she said.
St. Francis nurse Blaine Southward said he is ready to go back to work even though he suspects there will be hard feelings. He said the best way to eliminate any tension between hospital management and nurses is to focus on the patients.
"I think that has to take precedence," Southward said today. "You go in as a professional and do your job the best as you can. Then you see how management reacts and you see if there is a willingness to heal and improve the situation."
He figures he'll know the answer to that question in about a month.
Nurses at Queen's will start at 7 a.m. Friday. Before returning to work, Queen's nurses must attend a two-hour meeting aimed at smoothing away potential problems, said Gail Tiwanak, the hospital's vice president for marketing and communications.
Tiwanak said the hospital has researched how Mainland hospitals dealt with post-strike relationships.
"At the meetings, we will cover policies on harassment," Tiwanak said. "Obviously, what we are trying to do is minimize the interchange between some of the nurses who crossed the picket line and those who were on strike."
Tiwanak said she is confident that nurses, management and even doctors will be able to heal relationships that were damaged by the strike.
"We still anticipate this will take some time," she said. "We are taking every possible measure we can to make this transition as smooth as possible."
But it won't be easy, said Queen's nurse Liz Clavin. The strike dealt too strong a blow to the relationship between nurses and management, she said.
Some nurses will be going back to work "very angry," she said.
"Nothing is ever going to be the same again," she said. "We feel betrayed by them. There is always a way to get past that, but that is going to have to be an individual process."
Clavin will return to work with the first nurses Friday and said she feels she can dwell more on the positive than the negative feelings in a post-strike work environment.
"I am certainly going back to work with an open mind," she said.
Nurses at Kuakini have been slowly returning to work since Friday, said nurse Kerry Lineham, who returned to work last night.
"It's going to be a little difficult, but in general, we are there for the patients, not the politics," he said. "That is how I am going to handle it and that is how others will."
Kuakini spokeswoman Donda Spiker said the hospital stressed to its nurses during orientation meetings that they were all a part of a core philosophy.
"We don't want them to leave," she said. "This is what we said at the orientation meetings. Because of the strike, this is a new beginning for us. This is where we want to go and these are our plans. We said it is up to you if you want to be a part of it."
Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.
