Nurses Picket UCI Medical Center in Bid for Better Wages, Conditions

Brandishing protest signs, about 200 nurses picketed Thursday at UCI Medical Center in Orange in a bid to win higher wages and better working conditions.

A series of informational picketings are being orchestrated at University of California teaching hospitals throughout the state by the California Nurses Assn., which is seeking to increase its leverage in contract negotiations with university management. The nurses’ current systemwide contract with the university is scheduled to expire Monday.

Invigorated by a recent successful nurses’ strike involving a private hospital group in San Francisco, about 200 UCI nurses on Thursday rotated into picket lines at UCI Medical Center. At any one time, 50 nurses marched outside the entrance to the hospital and passed out flyers explaining their position to patients and hospital visitors.

Patient care was uninterrupted during the demonstration. Union spokeswomen said many nurses picketed on their lunch hours and nurses who were off work drove to the hospital from their homes.

A major demand of the union is that the university should pay nurses at all of its hospitals the same salaries and benefits, specifically the premium salary package that nurses at UC San Francisco enjoy.

If that demand were achieved, UCI nurses would be among those who would benefit most. Of the five major teaching hospitals in the university system, the average annual nursing salary at UCI is the lowest, $31,591, according to the university. By contrast, the average nursing salary at UC San Francisco is $38,127 a year.

Greg Kramp, the chief negotiator for the university, said he believes that the California Nurses Assn. “has some legitimate issues” and that hospitals everywhere are having trouble coping with a shortage of nurses. But he said the university can’t afford to bring the salaries of all nurses in the university system up to the salaries of San Francisco nurses. He said that effort would cost the university about $14.8 million a year.

Kramp said the university instead is offering UCI nurses a 3.5% raise that would go into effect on Tuesday and another 2.5% raise that would become effective May 1. He said the university determines salaries at individual hospitals based on what competing hospitals in the same market area are paying.

But that offer is unacceptable to the nurses, said Michele Molotsky, a Southern California organizer for the California Nurses Assn. If a new contract is not agreed upon by Tuesday, she said, the union will assess its options, which include the possibility of working under the old contract terms during continued negotiations, requesting the help of a state mediator or calling for a work slowdown or strike.