Queen’s nurses vote to authorize strike
COURTESY OF HNA / MAY 31
Nurses at the Queen’s Medical Center hold a “March on the Boss” event during negotiations with The Queen’s Health System.
The unionized nurses of The Queen’s Health System have voted to authorize a strike.
The Hawaii Nurses’ Association, the union representing more than 1,900 nurses at Queen’s Punchbowl and West campuses, said in a news release on Tuesday that 90% voted in favor of authorizing a strike.
Voting began Thursday and ended at 5 p.m. on Tuesday.
The nurses have been working without a contract since June 30. Negotiations have been ongoing since April, but reached a stalemate over issues including staffing, pay increases, and the scheduling of paid time off.
“Safe staffing to provide quality patient care is our primary concern,” HNA President Rosalee Agas-Yuu said in the release. “The employer offered safe nurse-to-patient staffing ratios and we thought we were making progress toward an agreement, but in the next bargaining session what they offered us was suddenly no longer on the table. This is a blatant, textbook case of regressive bargaining, an unfair labor practice. It was the last straw for many of the nurses.”
“The Queen’s Medical Center remains committed to reaching an agreement with HNA,” said Queen’s Chief Nursing Executive Linda Puu in an emailed statement. “We do not want a strike and remain hopeful a contract that both Queen’s and our nurses can be proud of can be reached.”
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HNA said the dates for a strike have not been set, and that Queen’s has agreed to meet again on Jan. 7.
The vote to authorize a strike comes less than three months after HNA and Kapi‘olani Medical Center for Women and Children agreed to a new, three-year contract covering about 600 nurses in October. That agreement came after the union held two strikes over more than a year of negotiations and management locked out the nurses, leading to the arrest of 10 activists who sat down in the medical center’s driveway to block the arrival of temporary staff.
After federal mediators stepped in for a second time, an agreement between the two parties was reached.
Agas-Yuu said the nurses at Queen’s, as well as Wilcox Medical Center, are also rallying over safe staffing ratios.
The 159 union nurses at Wilcox are also voting whether to authorize a strike through 8 p.m. Wednesday. Their contract expired on Aug. 31.
