For another week, nurses and the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital administration have yet to reach a contract deal. A strike by the nurses could begin as early as Friday.
“Younger nurses don’t want to stay when they’re overworked, when the workload is just too much, the acuity was too high,” said Judy Danella, registered nurse and president of United Steelworkers Local 4-200, which is handling the negotiations for more than 1,700 nurses there. “I think if we fix the safe-staffing part, we can definitely improve nurses coming into the profession.”
With a strike looming, Rutgers’ deans sent a request to medical students to volunteer for four-hour morning shifts, serving as support staff during a transition to replacement nurses, to which the medical students wrote an open letter voicing their concerns for their workload, the nurses on the front lines and the pressure to cross a picket line with fellow hospital staff.
“It only hurts each other and our ability to work together as a health care team when you have one set of workers or students or trainees undermining the concerns and the arguments of another,” said Dr. Tzeidel Eichenberg, resident at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
If no agreement is reached this week, nurses are expected to walk out and start picketing on Friday morning.
— Editor’s note: RWJBarnabas Health is an underwriter of NJ Spotlight News.
