Nurses, Hospital Workers Rally For Contract In Santa Clara County

SAN JOSE, CA — Nurses, medical professionals and hospital workers rallied in front of the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center Wednesday afternoon, calling upon the county to recognize their demands for higher wages and new contracts.

"What do we want?" one protester called into a microphone Wednesday. "Contracts! the crowd of over 100 people responded. And they want them now, according to their chants.

About 3,000 of the county's nurses are represented by their local union, the Registered Nurses Professional Association, which for months has been attempting negotiations with the county's Labor Relations department for new contracts, as their old ones will expire by the end of October.

Workers with the RNPA and another union, the Service Employees International Union, Local 521, have for weeks been speaking during the county's Board of Supervisors meetings to motivate local lawmakers to hear their demands for higher wages and better working conditions.

Debbie Chang, president of the local RNPA chapter, said her workers need better pay or many will leave, as they already are, for other counties that pay higher and have more adequately staffed hospitals and offices. She said they are trying to stop a "revolving door" effect on
medical staff.

"What we want is the county to propose a decent living wage. We want to keep our nurses that work in this community to continue living here," Chang said. "That means we're continuing to hire our newest nurses with no experience fresh out of college and train them, only to see them hired elsewhere. That revolving door needs to stop."

She said two areas of the county, namely medical facilities in Juvenile Hall and Main Jail, are in a "staffing crisis" because of noncompetitive wages are driving nurses away. This, she said, means patient care at understaffed facilities suffers.

"Our patients in those areas deserve to have excellent nursing care at all times," Chang said.

Without a new, competitive contract from the county, Chang said her workers, particularly the lowest paid of them, will continue leaving the county, either for new jobs or to find more affordable places to live outside the county. Meanwhile, others have either already left the area or have moved in with family to afford to live close to their work.

Gilbert Martinez, a Valley Medical worker represented by SEIU Local 521, moved about three-and-a-half hours away last year to Los Banos for an affordable place to live, after being born and raised in San Jose about 48 years ago.

—Bay City News