MEDIA ADVISORY
MONDAY, APRIL 14, 2025
CONTACT: Megan Othersen Gorman / [email protected] / (215) 817-5781
Dave Bates / [email protected] / (347) 865-8038
Acuity is At An All-time High, While Staffing is Dangerously Low.
Caregivers Ask: Why Is Temple Dragging Its Heels on Our Contract?
Nurses, Techs, and Service Workers From Chestnut Hill Hospital and Techs and Professionals From Jeanes Hospital to Hold a Press Conference WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16TH at NOON to Call On Temple Health to Come to the Bargaining Table and Prioritize Patient Care
All 450 Temple Health Employees Have Authorized Their Bargaining Committees to Call Strikes, If Necessary
Philadelphia, PA – Hundreds of frontline workers at two Temple Health-owned satellite campuses – Chestnut Hill Hospital and Jeanes Hospital – want and deserve fair contracts that respect the services they provide to their hospitals and to the people who rely on their facilities for critical, life-saving care. Yet Temple Health, at separate bargaining tables, has for month after month after month, offered them – and by extension, their patient communities – anything but.
All four Locals, representing 450 frontline Temple Health workers, have authorized strikes, if necessary.
Temple management has slow-walked the bargaining process at every turn for all four Locals. What’s worse, Temple is proposing actual cuts to current levels of compensation for staff at Chestnut Hill despite the fact that retention of experienced caregivers is a serious problem that impacts quality of care at both hospitals. Temple has also refused to make the same commitments that are in place at other Temple campuses to staff the hospital safely.
This is not how Temple Health treats caregivers at its other campuses.
Once deemed heroes, these frontline workers, all vital to the health and well-being of their respective communities, are fed up with the chronic stonewalling, the chronic understaffing, and lack of respect for what they bring to patients in the halls of their hospitals.
“Chestnut Hill Hospital has Temple’s name on the front of the building and in their advertisements, and Chestnut Hill Hospital caregivers and workers provide the same excellent service as our counterparts in other facilities in the system, but Temple doesn’t treat us like the other Temple techs, nurses, and workers – they’re actually refusing to,” says Beth Diehl, a Chestnut Hill Hospital X-ray Technologist. “We are not second-tier employees, and we’re tired of being treated as though we are. We’re tired of losing colleagues to other facilities that respect their workers more. Our patient community here in Chestnut Hill deserves better.”
“I work on the Behavioral Health floor where all of our patients are over age 65, and I strive every day to give them respect and a sense of ‘I am a person’. But in order to make sure our patients are treated with respect, we also have to make sure our staff are treated with respect,” says Venus Russell, a Unit Support Coordinator for more than 40 years; she has been at Chestnut Hill Hospital for 10. “Instead, Temple executives have offered us a miniscule raise for experienced staff which for me is around 35 cents an hour. Eggs cost about 76 cents each now. So Temple is telling me that I can no longer afford to buy eggs for my grandchildren. These low wages are causing huge turnover and understaffing, making it difficult to provide the care our community needs. We’re going to do whatever it takes to win the respect we deserve.”
Beth, Venus, and their colleagues want the media and their communities to know, they’re not Temple’s second tier. The patients and communities they serve deserve more.
Summary of issues attached.
PRESS CONFERENCE
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 2025
| WHO | Nurses, techs, and service workers from Chestnut Hill Hospital and techs and professionals from Jeanes Hospital, all of whom are in contract negotiations with mutual owner Temple Health |
| WHAT | Temple management has slow-walked the bargaining process at every turn for all four Locals. They are proposing cuts to current levels of compensation for staff at Chestnut Hill, with only minimal increases for others at both campuses, despite the fact that recruitment and retention are serious, quality-of-care issues in both hospitals, where acuity is at an all-time high and staffing is dangerously low. The caregivers are fed up with the chronic stonewalling and lack of respect for what they bring to patients in the halls of their hospitals. |
| WHEN | WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 2025
NOON |
| WHERE | Outside Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19118 |
Chestnut Hill Nurses United, Chestnut Hill Techs United, and Jeanes Techs & Pros United are all Locals of PASNAP – the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, which represents more than 11,000 frontline healthcare professionals across the commonwealth and was founded 25 years ago on the belief that patients do better when critical care staff have a strong voice to advocate for their patients and themselves.
SEIU Healthcare PA represents 130 Chestnut Hill Hospital service members including nurse assistants, mental health workers, unit support coordinators, ER techs, EKG techs, patient care techs, phlebotomists, patient transporters and others.
