Around 700 workers from a metro Detroit hospital, McLaren Macomb, are on strike. According to the union representing the workers, that includes about 500 nurses and 200 support staff.
The three-day strike began Monday morning and will end Thursday.
The striking workers are represented by the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 40.
Terri Dagg-Barr, a registered nurse at McLaren Macomb, is a vice president at the OPEIU local. She said "poverty wages" and labor violations by the hospital were some of the primary reasons the strike began.
“We currently have seven unfair labor practices against the hospital for the nurses and six for the service group,” she said, referring to complaints filed with the federal government. “For example, we have an unfair labor practice related to bad faith bargaining and for purposefully understaffing the units.”
Meanwhile, t0he hospital said it's filed four unfair labor practices charges against the union.
The strike is composed of two groups: nurses and service group healthcare workers. According to Dagg-Barr, the nurses' biggest concern is safe staffing.
In the wake of a 2004 strike, she said, the union was able to negotiate a nurse-to-patient ratio, but it's no longer adequate. The union says workers are requesting an improved ratio in order to ensure nurses aren’t overwhelmed and patients are taken care of safely.
For service group workers, the focus is on wages. Both nurses and service workers have the same insurance plans and premiums, Dagg-Barr said, but for service workers, that cost is too high in proportion to their pay.
McLaren Macomb, which says on its website that it operates "the busiest emergency department in Macomb County," said in a statement that it's staying "open and operational" during the strike. The hospital said it's working with the union in good faith, but the union has abandoned negotiations.
Dagg-Barr said after a year of negotiations with the hospital, they have reached no agreement.
“In some areas they've been not budging at all with any of their numbers,” she said of the hospital. “They're saying it's unsustainable, which I disagree [with], because it's a known fact that short-staffing leads to issues with patients, sentinel events, falls, bed sores, things like that.”
The hospital said it's offering a nearly 16% increase in compensation for nurses in the event of short-staffing, which would bring the rate to $59.69 per hour by year three of the contract.
The hospital's proposal includes a revised wage scale that would result boost compensation by between 16% and 40% over the three-year contract period.
McLaren Macomb said while it's staying open during the strike, workers walking off the job threaten "the very things they claim to protect," including patient access, job security, and wages and benefits.
The hospital said it's working to ensure its own long-term stability, “especially considering recently passed federal legislation that significantly reduces Medicaid reimbursements and threatens financial sustainability for health care providers across the country.”
“The union’s narrative that we are unsafe and have horrible working conditions is an outright misrepresentation of the reality of the quality care provided at the hospital," McLaren Macomb said. "We remain hopeful that once all facts are understood, we can bring our team back together under a contract that is both fair and forward-looking.”
