Union calls for a community boycott of hospital

At an impasse with the hospital, registered nurses at Armstrong County Memorial Hospital in Kittanning, Pa., staged an informational picket line in March. The Armstrong Nurses Association represented by Healthcare-PSEA, Local 5120, has been working without a contract for nearly a year.

In addition to informational picketing, the union has called on the community to boycott the hospital, asking residents to get their lab work, X-rays and other nonemergency procedures done at other hospitals.

Armstrong is trying to implement a contract members feel they can’t live with, says Terry Myers, an RN at the hospital and the union president.

As a result, 34 of its more than 200 nurses have left in the last six months and not been replaced. "They left rather than worry about working conditions," says Myers.

The nurses are fighting for contract language to end the practice of pulling nurses from the unit where they normally work into other units to cover shortages. "The hospital’s mentality is ‘a nurse is a nurse,’ but we maintain that pulling nurses is an unsafe practice," she says.

The nurses also oppose the hospital’s plan to freeze their pension plan, which is funded by the hospital and offers guaranteed benefits, and replace it with a defined- contribution plan, or 401(k), that requires the nurses to contribute their own money as well as determine how that money would be invested.

"It’s not about the money," says Myers. "It’s about a hospital administration that doesn’t allow its nurses to retire with the dignity that they deserve."