After nurses at St. Catherine of Siena Hospital in Smithtown voted powerfully to authorize a strike, Catholic Health Services joined the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) at the bargaining table on Thursday, August 17.
Since the first opportunity to negotiate their contract on June 30, nurses have been united and committed to their goal of gaining safe staffing and fair wages. They’ve packed out every negotiation room, marched on the CEO, and had an overwhelming 98% vote supporting the authorization of a strike to show their seriousness about their demands.
This dedication and hard work paid off last Thursday when Catholic Health and St. Catherine agreed to a tentative agreement to improve nurse-to-patient ratios and respectful wages for nurses. This relayed into a Tuesday ratification of the contract by 89% of the NYSNA nurses.
Safe staffing is a requirement to provide the best possible care for patients. The number of patients assigned to a nurse has a direct impact on the quality of care that nurse can provide. Currently, St. Catherine’s averages 1 nurse for every 12 patients in the emergency room. Telemetry, one of the hospital’s most acute floors according to the NYSNA, should have a 1:5 ratio for optimum care. However, at St. Catherine’s Hospital, a single nurse tends to between 8 and 10 patients, almost double the recommended amount, depending on the day.
“Nurses are a very, very conscientious people, so even if you have one and a half times the number of patients, you’re going to do your best to get the job done for the patients,” says Lorraine Incarnato, an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) nurse at St. Catherine’s Hospital for over thirty-five years. As the lowest paying hospital in Suffolk County, nurses’ wages do not represent the amount of work and care these nurses give to their patients.
“St Catherine nurses are part of this community and are fighting for a hospital where their family, friends, and neighbors can receive the best care” says a union representative of NYSNA.
According to NYSNA, the new three-year contract includes “significant gains for nurses, such as set nurse-to-patient staffing ratios to improve patient safety, expedited staffing enforcement language, and an average wage increase of 23% over the course of the contract. Other contract highlights include Juneteenth and Martin Luther King Jr. Day as premium holiday, improved retiree health benefits, float incentive pay, and more.”
“From the beginning, St. Catherine of Siena nurses made clear what this was all about,” said NYSNA President at St. Catherine’s, Tammy Miller, RN. “Safe staffing for our patients and respect for our nurses. With improved staffing and wage increases that make us competitive with other Long Island hospitals, St. Catherine’s will be able to recruit and retain more nurses to ensure quality care for every single patient that walks through our doors. This is the power of our union!”
“We said we would do whatever it takes to win a fair contract because we care about our patients,” said Lorraine Incarnato, RN. “We were prepared to go on strike but are so glad to have reached an agreement that keeps us where we want to be, at the bedside caring for our patients. We’re proud to join St. Joseph and St. Charles nurses as the third Catholic Health System hospital to win a fair contract, a testament to what nurses can do when we fight together for our profession and for our community.”
“Long Island nurses are on a roll!” said NYSNA President Nancy Hagans, RN, BSN, CCRN. “With this victory, St. Catherine of Siena nurses showed the power of nurses coming together to fight for the care their patients deserve, and the respect nurses deserve. This is a new day for Long Island nurses and patients.”
This is not the only victory for Long Island nurses, not just those associated with Catholic Health Services. According to NSNYA, nurses at Mount Sinai South Nassau in Oceanside voted to join NYSNA in January. In February, NYSNA nurses at Northwell Health’s South Shore University Hospital in Bay Shore voted to “approve a new contract that raised their salaries nearly 19% and won an expedited arbitration of staffing disputes three days before they were set to strike.”
In April, St. Joseph’s Hospital of Catholic Health Services “settled a contract with increased wages and staffing wins for nurses, and this past June, St. Charles nurses settled a new contract shortly after delivering a strike notice.” With the recent victory at St. Catherine’s, once one of Suffolk County’s most well-paid hospitals, the needs that nurses have vocalized have now been reinforced. These needs are not only for themselves in the forms of better working conditions, realistic expectations, and the attraction of new staff to the hospital, but the needs are also those of the patients, whose care is impacted if nurses cannot adequately run a floor.
