On September 30, pediatric nurses represented by the Washington State Nurses Association (WSNA) held an informational picket in front of Seattle Children’s Hospital. The union demonstration took place from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., with a break at 9 a.m. before it resumed at 11 a.m. Among those who showed up to provide free meals to nurses and others were two food truck vendors: Paparepas, a family-owned Venezuelan restaurant on Capitol Hill, and Thai-U-Up, a Thai restaurant in Burien.
The WSNA has been at the bargaining table for over 17 sessions. The negotiations address providing increased sick leave for nurses, with the WSNA arguing that patient health and safety are a concern. Along with other issues related to pay and hours, the WSNA is aiming to address racial discrimination and workplace violence in the medical field.
At the center of the negotiations is the issue of giving nurses more time off, including sick leave and adequate breaks. While the hospital might dismiss these demands as nurses simply wanting to do less work, the counterargument is that, by overworking nurses, patients are denied proper care due to nurses' inability to operate at full capacity. In addition, the argument in favor of increasing sick leave is there are many immunocompromised patients, and by forcing nurses to come in sick, they are risking the lives of these patients.
Seattle Children’s responded by hiring the law firm Morgan Lewis to negotiate with the WSNA, a move that the WSNA claims is in bad faith, as the firm is known for representing companies with antiunion business practices, including Starbucks, Amazon, and Tesla. Due to this, it has garnered a reputation as one of the biggest “union-busting” law firms in the U.S.
In addition, the hospital announced two weeks prior that 350 openings were removed and 154 employees were laid off in response to federal and state-level funding cuts. At the demonstration, many WSNA-affiliated nurses and those in solidarity with healthcare workers brandished signs drawing attention to the actions of Seattle Children’s that seemed to place profits over workers.
Kara, a WSNA-registered nurse who works with immunocompromised patients, is a bedside nurse in the cancer and blood disorders center. She explained at the event that she works with some of the sickest kids in the world, whose immune systems can’t fight diseases such as the common cold. Despite this, nurses are still expected to come in sick, potentially exposing these patients to diseases they’re unable to fight and might die from.
“We have to then decide, do I come in sick and risk getting my patients sick and risk their lives, or do I stay home take care of myself, and risk getting disciplined because I don’t have enough sick time in my bay?” Kara said. “And of course, a lot of nurses are forced to make that decision, and we will always choose the health of our kids, our patients before ourselves. And so a lot of our nurses are being disciplined and it’s just unfortunate. because we shouldn’t have to choose our patients’ health over our careers, and if we get too many disciplines, we lose our jobs.”
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