RWJ Nurses Reject Latest Offer From Hospital; Restraining Order Issued

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ — On Tuesday, the union that represents the 1,700 nurses on strike at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital New Brunswick rejected a three-year contract proposal from the hospital.

The head of the nurses' union, United Steel Workers Local 4-200 President Judy Danella, said the union rejected the contract because she said it still does not provide enough nursing staffing.

"It was the same contract offer they gave us in July," she told Patch. "It's really nothing better than what we had pre-strike."

When a nurse calls out sick, the hospital does not provide enough "cover" nurses to cover their shifts, she said, and the burden falls on "the other nurses working that day to cover for them."

RWJ countered their hospital has the highest staffing levels in the state.

By rejecting Tuesday's offer, this means the strike, which began Aug. 4, will continue indefinitely.

“We are deeply disappointed that the union representing our nurses voted today to prolong their strike," said RWJ spokeswoman Wendy Gottsegen. "This strike cannot go on forever.”

Both sides report scuffles, name-calling in the picket lines

Also this week, Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Thomas McCloskey issued a temporary restraining order against the nurses, preventing them from gathering in large crowds near the hospital's entrances, from blocking hospital employees getting to work — and from calling them names.

"(This is) in response to the increasingly aggressive activities that began last week," said hospital spokeswoman Gottsegen. "This order is needed to prevent injury or worse from the increasingly dangerous activities of the picketers."

Meanwhile, three nurses on strike filed a police report on a hospital security guard who they say shoved a female nurse in the picket line last week, NJ 101.5 reported.

Danella said there have been instances of nurses on strike calling the replacement nurses "scabs."

"Yes, there were a couple incidents where security got involved ... The replacement nurses are scabs. That's what they are," she said. "But there was no aggression from the nurses in my eyes at all."

The hospital filed the request for the temporary restraining order Monday, and the judge granted it Monday night.

A press release from the union called the restraining order "an extreme, anti-labor tactic right out of the MAGA playbook."

The restraining order means the nurses can now only gather in small groups. They can no longer use megaphones, drums, air horns or noisemakers, all of which the nurses were using regularly as they gathered in large lines on the sidewalks of New Brunswick.

"I guess they didn't want as many nurses picketing," said Danella.

The language of the restraining order reads that: "Nurses on strike are prevented from "collecting or gathering in the streets or sidewalks or other public places at or near the hospital or in the parking lots, parking garages, parking garage entrance/exits ... for the purposes of intimidating or coercing plaintiff’s employees who desire to work ... inducing, intimidating or coercing Plaintiff’s employees who desire to work at its hospital, by insults, indecent talk, threats of force or violence, to leave its employ."

Federal mediators who are helping to resolve the strike are urging the nurses to enter into binding arbitration. But Danella said when the nurses last entered binding arbitration with RWJ, in their last strike in 2002, they were not happy with the contract they were forced to accept.

"The last time we went into binding arbitration it didn't go well for us," said Danella. "We don't want to go back there again."

RWJ already said it has spent "millions" flying in fill-in nurses from out of state, and putting them up at New Brunswick hotels.

"This nursing strike has significant economic consequences for both us and for our nurses. We have already paid more than $54 million for our replacement nurses," said RWJ University Hospital president Alan Lee, in this public letter the hospital published Sept. 14 about the strike.

"The cost of the strike is too great for it to continue indefinitely," said Gottsegen last week.