St. Joe's Workers Strike, Ask CHI-Franciscan to Take Better Care of Them

If your travels happen to take you by Saint Joseph or Saint Claire hospitals today, you may notice a little more activity than usual outside. Workers at the two CHI-Franciscan Health hospitals will be striking, demanding the organization address their complaints of unfair labor practices, which they say are hurting frontline patient care.

More than 1,100 workers at the two hospitals, members of SEIU Healthcare 1199NW, delivered notice that they would strike for 24 hours today. Among their complaints are a 10% cut to staff at the Pierce County hospitals and cuts to benefits. A recent press release warned of the possible strike.

... “The hospital has cut our staff by nearly 10% even though we have the same number of patients,” said Becky Horst, a Health Unit Coordinator at St. Clare Hospital.  “They’ve cut our benefits, too.  They’re sending profit to CHI in Denver and leaving us and our patients with less.” 

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“We are fed up with executives making decisions based on finances instead of what our community and our patients need,” said Jen Storm, a Nursing Assistant at St. Joseph Medical Center. “We don’t want to strike, but we need to send a strong message that St. Joe’s, St. Clare’s, and patients in Pierce County care too much to let Denver CHI executives put profits before patients. We’re real families, real workers, real patients, and we need our healthcare dollars to stay here.”

The strike follows recent community actions around charity care problems at CHI-Franciscan, including several protest actions held by Washington CAN! highlighting how stingy the hospitals, identified as nonprofit charities, are with financial aid and charity care.

“It’s clear that CHI-Franciscan has lost its way,” said Reverend Gregory Christopher of Shiloh Baptist Church. “We need to hold this corporation accountable to its commitment to care. This is not how a mission driven non-profit behaves.”

A press release from SEIU this morning officially announced the strike.

The strike follows months of bringing concerns to the negotiation table where the caregivers stood alongside community activists in calling on CHI Franciscan to fix its broken charity care policy and invest in Pierce County patients and workers.   Following little action from CHI Franciscan, caregivers felt there was no other alternative but to stand up for patients and our community by striking.

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The workers, members of SEIU Healthcare 1199NW, are calling for improved staffing, increased investment in frontline caregivers, a charity care policy that keeps patients out of debt, and an end to unfair labor practices. 

Beginning at 7 this morning, workers including nursing assistants, housekeeping, dietary, sterile processing, unit coordinators, and technical positions including radiology techs, sonographers, and surgical techs walked off the job at St. Joe's in Tacoma and St. Claire's in Lakewood. Unless an agreement is reached sooner, they plan to keep at it until 7 a.m. tomorrow. 

They'll go back to work tomorrow, and back to the bargaining table. Without an agreement, though, we're guessing this won't be the last we hear from them.