Posted at 1:52 p.m., Thursday, May 15, 2003
Wahiawa nurses back on picket lines
By Mike Gordon and Curtis Lum
Advertiser Staff Writers
Negotiations lasted only an hour.
No further talks have been scheduled to end the 11-day walkout. Last night's session was the first time the two sides had met since April 30.
"We will continue walking the picket line until they decide they want to either accept the contract we offered or they come back with another proposal," said nurse Lindsay Evans.
Negotiators from the Hawai'i Nurses Association presented a contract proposal to hospital management at about 8 p.m. But Sue Scheider, the union's collective bargaining director, said the hospital rejected the offer less than a half-hour later.
Scheider said two-thirds of the almost 60 striking nurses had gone to the negotiations.
"Within 20 minutes, the nurses' hopes were changed to disappointment and anger as the federal mediator reported that the hospital's team had not only rejected the union's counter-offer, but was insisting on one of their three previous options that had already been soundly rejected by the nurses," she said.
Hospital spokesman Richard Aea said the hospital rejected the union's counter offer because it was too costly.
"Right now we are on call with the federal mediator," he said today. "We had gone in hoping for a productive session. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way."
