Strike begins for nurses at Wahiawa hospital
By Robbie Dingeman and Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writers
Nurses at Wahiawa General Hospital went on strike yesterday, forcing officials to make adjustments to maintain services at the only full-service hospital between 'Ewa and Kahuku.
Contract negotiations broke off last week and no new talks were scheduled. Sixty-two registered nurses are covered by the contract; three crossed the picket line yesterday, said Sue Scheider, collective bargaining director for the Hawai'i Nurses' Association.
Nurse managers filled in for strikers and for the most part services ran as usual at the 162-bed facility, hospital spokesman Richard Aea said.
Aea said the hospital has postponed elective surgery, but its emergency room, labor and delivery operation and outpatient services such as X-ray, rehab and laboratory work ran smoothly, he said.
"The ER was the usual busy. We did have patients coming in," Aea said. "We will still maintain our high standard of compassionate care."
The hospital's long-term-care unit is not being affected by the strike because no registered nurses work there.
Aea said there are no plans to hire traveling nurses from the Mainland.
City ambulances still planned to use the Wahiawa emergency room, said Donnie Gates, assistant chief for the city's Emergency Medical Services.
"We will communicate with them when we are going there," Gates said. "We don't anticipate any problems at this point."
The strike began at 7 a.m. The two sides last met with a federal mediator on Wednesday, but the negotiations ended when the hospital rejected a proposal from the union. Nurses had hoped talks would resume yesterday.
"This is the only hospital in the area that provides full-service healthcare to the community," Scheider said. "They have a very close relationship with their patients."
Because of safety issues, strikers only will walk picket lines from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., she said.
In December, nearly 1,400 nurses at three major Honolulu hospitals went on strike for nearly six weeks.
For those nurses at The Queen's Medical Center, St. Francis Medical Center and Kuakini Medical Center, the dispute focused on working conditions that included staffing issues, mandatory overtime and sick leave/paid time off benefits.
At Wahiawa, the union said the key issue is a proposed cut in benefits that would undermine a proposed pay increase. Scheider said the proposed wage increase would be offset if the union accepts a management proposal to have nurses pay a bigger share of their medical costs.
But management said employees would still receive an overall increase in compensation.
Aea said the employee share of co-payments would increase by $4 to $13 a month.
He said that nurses are being offered a 5 percent raise to their current base pay of $28.60 an hour, increasing their pay by $232 a month. "We're wondering how they can say it (the increased medical costs) offsets it."
Union members said the two sides are not far apart on wages. But there are sticking points in the benefits package, including health insurance, increased pay for more senior workers and access to retiree benefits.
"We are a unified group," said Ella Siroskey, a nurse in the hospital's intensive care unit. "We were hoping they would come back to the table before this but they didn't."
Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012. Reach Robbie Dingeman at rdingeman@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2429.
Correction: Kuakini Medical Center was one of three hospitals where nurses went on strike in December. Information in a previous version of this story was incorrect.
