Nurses Strike Two More Hospitals; 1,200 Now Idle in Bay Area Dispute

BERKELEY —  Nearly 900 nurses here left their jobs at Alta Bates and Herrick hospitals Friday, bringing to more than 1,200 the number of nurses now on strike in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area.

Federally mediated talks between Alta Bates Corp., the management body for the two Berkeley hospitals, and union officials broke down over salary issues Thursday night and no new negotiations have been set.

The strike, which started at 7 a.m. Friday, came just three days after 316 other members of the California Nurses Assn. walked off the job at 223-bed Providence Hospital in Oakland, forcing it to transfer or discharge all but 17 patients.

Some Continue Talks

Four other local hospitals are attempting to negotiate contracts with the California Nurses Assn. Since July 1, nurses at Brookside Hospital in San Pablo, Children’s Hospital in Oakland, Alameda Hospital in Alameda and Washington Hospital in Fremont have been working without a contract.

At Alta Bates, all but 107 obstetrical, surgical and special care patients and 40 rehabilitation and psychiatric patients at Herrick were either discharged, transferred or referred to other hospitals, said Carl Smith, spokesman for the Alta Bates Corp.

The emergency room at Herrick was closed Thursday afternoon, but the one at Alta Bates will remain open, Smith said, explaining that under the hospital’s strike planning procedure, operations and patient loads were scaled down through the week. The strike cut back the hospitals’ capacity by more than 200 patients, but Smith said the corporation will call on the 50 to 75 administrative nurses to take care of the remaining patients and attract nurses from elsewhere to increase capacity during the strike.

The two Berkeley hospitals have a total of 565 beds, but only average about 350 patients during the summer, Smith said.

Nurses at Alta Bates and Herrick, who have been working without a contract since July 1, are seeking a 14% wage increase over two years; management has offered a 6.5% increase.

Offer Called Inadequate

Nurses on the picket line said Friday that the company’s offer would not be adequate compensation for the increasing workload eastern Bay Area nurses are experiencing as a result of a growing nationwide nursing shortage. They said that nurses at some other hospitals are being paid more and that a 3% yearly wage increase does not keep pace with local inflation.

“This strike is about the future of nurses,” said Anne Fischer, a nurse at Alta Bates’ coronary care unit. “In our society, money is a sign of professional recognition and respect and we as nurses just aren’t getting it.”

Other hospitals in the area are already feeling the effects of the strikes. The 280-bed Merritt Hospital in Oakland, the closest alternative to Providence, Alta Bates and Herrick, increased its patient census by 50 to 60 this week and now runs at near-full capacity, said Nora Juarbe, a spokeswoman for the hospital.

Donald Waters, a spokesman for the Alameda-Contra Costa Medical Assn., said that with 37 hospitals and 5,558 beds in the two eastern Bay Area counties, the strike will have a dramatic effect only on specialized care services, such as elective surgery, but would only inconvenience most other patients, who would simply have to go to an unaffected hospital.

“It may require some patients to go as far as 20 miles from where they were going to get the care they need,” he said. “A lot of elective surgical care will have to be rescheduled or put off.”