A SLC hospital fires three veteran nurses after their six-year fight to organize

http://www.slweekly.com/index.cfm?do=article.details&id=A77726EB-AE09-8F07-E3E0F22C2B537611

By Holly Mullen
Posted 01/24/2008

Earlier this month intensive care nurse Lori Gay took a lunch break, as she often does, in a small room 30 feet from her nurses’ station at Salt Lake Regional Medical Center (SLMRC). But, on this day, along with two other nurses who joined her, it turned out to be her undoing.

The following day, on Jan. 11, a hospital administrator told the three women they had jeopardized patient safety by leaving their station and fired them.



“It was flabbergasting,” says Gay, 48. “In our unit, we’ve always divvied up the lunch breaks. It’s been a practice that a few will go and some will stay behind, then that group will go. But we were told we had neglected our patients. We were right across the hall. But that was the end.”

It happens the women were fired the same week news came that a six-year effort to organize a nurse’s union at SLRMC had crumbled. Gay and her two ICU colleagues, Shauna Mann and Dianne Player, both 58, had been key players in the organizing work.

“It’s not a coincidence that we lost our jobs. I’m mad as hell,” Mann says. “This has implications for all nurses. If our jobs aren’t safe when we’re at lunch across the hall, then who is safe? On top of everything else, is trying to sully our reputations.”

The nurses say hospital managers have threatened to report them to state licensing officials, alleging their failure in protecting patients, thus compounding their punishment and making them unemployable elsewhere.

FULL story at link.

First, nurses are NOT PAID for their lunch time. They were off the clock while they were in the room. Second, that break room was on the patient unit. They were within easy distance of their patients should someone else on the floor alerted them to a crisis. There is no case for abandonment at any level. Third, labor law guaranteeing all workers a 15 minute break every 2 hours plus a break for a meal is protecting them.

I think the state licensing board will get a big laugh out of this one and that their licenses are safe.

However, that hospital is not safe from a countersuit. They need to sue now, sue big, and not back down. They'll win. I just wish the damages could come out of the pockets of every suit in that hospital. They need to face a little personal responsibility for playing dirty.