Nurses Union Pushes Back Against Cape Cod Healthcare Furloughs

HYANNIS, MA — In response to the news this week that Cape Cod Healthcare, a health care service provider with two hospitals in the area, will be furloughing approximately 600 employees including about 50 nurses, the Massachusetts Nurses Association, one of the state's largest nurses unions, threatened legal action.

"The MNA will be pursuing whatever legal means are open to them to stop these cuts," the association said in a news release Friday.

The four-week furloughs will affect every position in the Cape Cod Healthcare network except for employees working on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis, Patch reported earlier. The company will continue to pay benefits to its furloughed employees, which will be eligible for unemployment, and will reassess the needs after the initial furlough.

RELATED: 600 Cape Cod Healthcare Nurses, Employees Furloughed Amid Coronavirus

Senior staff and managers will have salary cuts ranging from 5 percent to 12.5 percent through Saturday, October 3, the hospital announced this week.

The temporary suspensions and salary reductions come as the company has lost some 41 percent of its revenue and is expecting to lose $74 million by the end of the fiscal year, Patch reported this week.

But the Massachusetts Nurses Association and registered nurses who work for Cape Cod Health Care, including nurses at Cape Cod and Falmouth Hospitals and the Cape Cod VNA, say they are "alarmed and outraged" by the decision and criticized the senior management team's pay cuts as too little.

"Nurses and other members of our health care team are astounded by this callous and short-sighted decision, which we believe will place all of our patients in jeopardy and have dangerous consequences for the remaining staff, who are already exhausted from working under what has been the most trying time for health care workers," Shannon Sherman, RN, chair of the nurses Massachusetts Nurses Association local bargaining unit at Cape Cod Hospital said in a statement.

Other critics said the cuts will only create more work for the remaining staff at the hospitals.

"We're going to need all the help we can get to give the best care to our community and this will only add to the stress level of the nurses," Michelle Brum, vice chair of the nurses bargaining unit and a nurse in the post anesthesia care unit, said in a news release.

The government has reported it will award Cape Cod Healthcare more than $20 million from the federal stimulus package, as well as cuts to payroll taxes and an increase to reimbursement rates for the care of COVID-19 patients, said the association.

Patch has reached out to Cape Cod Healthcare for comment.

Previously: 600 Cape Cod Healthcare Nurses, Employees Furloughed Amid Coronavirus