St. Mary Nurses To Picket For New Contract

LANGHORNE, PA — Nurses at St. Mary Medical Center plan to picket Thursday afternoon as negotiations continue on their new contract with the hospital.

The roughly 800 nurses at St. Mary voted in August to join the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals. Since then, they've been in negotiations with Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic, which owns St. Mary, over a new contact.

Thursday's picket will be informational, and comes as nurses continue treating patients sick with the coronavirus. The union claims Trinity executives "are dragging their feet on putting basic patient protections and fairness for nurses in writing" in a new contract.

This month, Trinity made cuts to nursing and other staff, which the union says is putting added pressure on already overburdened frontline health workers.

Trinity spokeswoman Ann D'Antonio said the hospital has had to make changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After a break, she said, the hospital resumed negotiations in June.

"Despite these obstacles and the related financial impact the pandemic has had on St. Mary and other hospitals around the country, we remain fully committed to negotiating in good faith and in the spirit of obtaining a fair, consistent and sustainable contract," she said. "We are aware of a planned demonstration of nurses and union supporters related to the ongoing negotiations, and we fully recognize and respect our nurses' rights to gather and demonstrate."

The picket, by nurses who are either off work or on a break, will be from 4:30-8:30 p.m. at the hospital.

Speeches are scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. and will include a coronavirus survivor who was treated at St. Mary for more than seven weeks — more than half of that time in intensive care.