FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Megan Othersen Gorman / 215-817-5781 / [email protected]
Thursday, November 9, 2023
Lower Bucks Hospital Per Diem RNs Vote “YES” to Unionize, Join Their Colleagues
Philadelphia, PA – Amid a boom in organizing in the greater Philadelphia area and nationwide, roughly 40 per diem nurses at Lower Bucks Hospital voted yesterday to unionize with PASNAP. Once their vote is certified by the National Labor Relations Board, the per diem RNs will join their colleagues in the Nurses Association of Lower Bucks Hospital (NALBH), already represented by PASNAP.
The Lower Bucks Hospital per diem nurses are the fourth newly organized group to take steps to join PASNAP in a week. On November 2nd, nurses from Chestnut Hill Hospital, technical specialists from Chestnut Hill Hospital, and professionals in the Office of Cancer Research at Fox Chase Medical Center all requested Union recognition from Temple Health, their mutual employer.
The Lower Bucks per diems’ vote was completed and counted at 9 p.m. yesterday.
“I feel like I can breathe now,” says Lower Bucks per diem ICU nurse Maria Valletto, R.N., a leader in the effort to organize. “I was a Union nurse when I was full-time, and I wanted the same protections for me and my per diem colleagues. I also know from experience that we will be able to use the voice being a Union member affords us to advocate strongly for our patients and for improvements in patient care.”
Lower Bucks Hospital is owned by the fifth-largest for-profit health system in the United States – Prime Healthcare, the California-based corporate umbrella for dozens of U.S. hospitals, including Suburban Community Hospital in Norristown. The nearly 200 unionized RNs and LPNs at Lower Bucks and Suburban are currently negotiating contracts with their mutual owner.
“We look forward to our per diem RNs joining us at the bargaining table to address their needs as well as those of our patients and to help us in our fight for safe staffing,” says ICU nurse Shirley Crowell, R.N., Co-President of the Nurses Association of Lower Bucks Hospital.
In bargaining, Lower Bucks Hospital management has made proposals to gut the nurses’ contract, focusing more on profits and rewarding their management staff than patient care. Lower Bucks Hospital CEO Michael Mott rakes in well over a quarter-million dollars per year while his hospital is short-staffed on a daily basis due to massive employee vacancies among its nurses, the very people largely responsible for caring for the patients.
On October 30th, the nurses at Lower Bucks Hospital held an informational picket to highlight the persistent staffing issues inside the hospital that imperil patients and nurses alike, and to alert their Bucks County community that patient care and bedside RNs at Lower Bucks Hospital are suffering. The nurses at Suburban Community Hospital sounded the same alarm with an informational picket the week earlier.
“PASNAP was founded on the belief that patients receive better care when critical care staff have a voice to advocate for their patients and themselves,” says PASNAP President Maureen May, R.N., a longtime Temple University Hospital Infant Intensive Care Unit nurse. “In this post-pandemic time, when staffing is often skeletal and nurses struggle to give patients the time and attention they deserve, nurses need protections and respect. Our voice has never been more important.”
“Our per diem nurses fought hard to gain a much needed voice in the workplace,” says Lower Bucks Hospital ICU nurse Anna Carlin, RN, co-president of the Nurses Association of Lower Bucks Hospital, “and yesterday, they won – which means our patients won, too. We are union strong at NALBH!”
The Nurses Association of Lower Bucks Hospital and the Suburban General Nurses’ Association are affiliates of PASNAP, the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, which represents nearly 10,000 frontline nurses and allied professionals across the Commonwealth.
