Nurses at Suburban Community and Lower Bucks Hospital authorize strike amid contract negotiation stalemate

Nurses at Suburban Community Hospital and Lower Bucks Hospital sent a message to their executives: ‘Tis the season for a new contract — or a strike.

The contracts affecting roughly 200 nurses at both hospitals expired Oct. 12. Last week, nurses at Suburban Community voted to authorize a strike. Union representatives waited for Monday night, following a vote in Lower Bucks, to issue a notice of their intent to strike in 10 days.

Contention during the negotiations has centered around the union’s demands for increased staffing and better health benefits, according to the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, or PASNAP, which represents nurses in both hospitals.

» READ MORE: Nurses picket outside Suburban Community, Lower Bucks hospitals amid union contract negotiations.

If the negotiations don’t lead to an agreement by Dec. 22, the nurses are ready to walk off the job, said Shannan Giambrone, an ICU nurse at Suburban Community. She said that the nurses feel unheard by management.

“Without that date looming over their head, they are not as motivated working with us,” Giambrone said.

More than 95% of the nurses at both hospitals who voted approved of the strike, PASNAP said.

Based in Southern California, Prime Healthcare is one of the largest for-profit hospital systems in the United States, with more than 40 hospitals in 16 states. In Pennsylvania, Prime hospitals include Philadelphia’s Roxborough Memorial Hospital and Lower Bucks Hospital in Bristol. Suburban Community Hospital near Norristown is also part of the Prime system, but it is owned by the company’s nonprofit arm, Prime Healthcare Foundation.

Michelle Aliprantis, a spokesperson for Prime, said that the health system has offered the nurses increased wages and improved health care benefits.

“It is disappointing that despite progress being made, the union has walked away from negotiations and has chosen to strike,” Aliprantis said in a statement.

Strike threats at Prime hospitals are not limited to the Philadelphia area.

The techs, medical assistants, and licensed vocational workers working at four Southern California hospitals are set to launch a five-day strike on Dec. 20, Becker’s Hospital Review reports.

Since May, Prime has been negotiating with the workers, who are represented by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West. In October, the union and the union representing nurses in the hospitals went on a similar five-day strike.

Seeing Prime colleagues call for strikes on the other side of the country has discouraged Suburban’s Giambrone, who says it shows the company doesn’t value employees and affirms that Prime’s proposals aren’t acceptable.

“We aren’t crazy, they aren’t treating their employees well,” she said.