Health - US nurses strike
WORKERS, DEC 2007 ISSUE
Nearly 700 nurses have been on strike at nine Appalachian Regional Healthcare (ARH) hospitals in Kentucky and West Virginia since 1 October.
The nurses are concerned that ARH's staffing decisions and rampant mandatory overtime are preventing them from giving patients the best possible care.
In pay negotiations, ARH is proposing modest pay increases but then demanding cuts in holiday pay and increases in health care premiums, effectively wiping out the pay increases.
The US equivalent of the TUC, the AFL-CIO, said that it and online donors will be contributing $20,000 to help the striking nurses. This donation comes just three days after the working men and women of the AFL-CIO delivered a truckload of food worth some $10,000 for the nurses in Hazard, Kentucky.
Ironically, the ARH hospitals were started by the legendary miners' union leader John L. Lewis to help sick miners.