Sutter: Nurses can’t work for five days if they joined strike

Thousands of Sutter Health nurses, including dozens from Sonoma County, cannot return to work this week if they participated in Monday’s one-day strike to decry low staffing levels.

In a statement, Sutter Health said substitute nurses were brought in to fill vacancies during the walkout and they’re contracted for “five days of guaranteed staffing amid the uncertainty of a widespread work stoppage.

“Union leaders were made aware in advance, as were those employees who chose to strike,” the statement concludes.

Reached Tuesday, National Nurses United President Deborah Burger, whose organization also includes the California Nurses Association, used an expletive to describe Sutter’s response to Monday’s strike.

She told The Press Democrat that Sutter was advised in advance that this week’s strike would last one day and it wasn’t necessary for substitutes to be contracted for five days.

“Nurses who are regularly scheduled to work during this lockout period will lose those days of pay. We urge Sutter to respect the nurses’ strike and let all nurses return to work,” the CNA said in its own statement.

Burger added that such a response is inappropriate during a nursing shortage and that other hospitals, like Kaiser Permanente, didn’t prevent nurses from returning to work following strikes.

“It’s retaliation. It’s pure and simple retaliation,” she said of Sutter’s decision.

Nurses won’t be able to return to work until Saturday, though Sutter’s statement adds they could be “reinstated sooner based on operational and patient care needs.”

In the meantime, Burger said, the affected nurses may have to look for work at other medical facilities in need of staffing.

Monday’s strike involved more than 8,000 nurses from 15 Sutter facilities across Northern California.

They included about 100 nurses from the Santa Rosa hospital.

Nurses say shortages have been ongoing for years but the issue has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nurses have been working without a contract since June, and negotiations with Sutter representatives have had little progress, according to the CNA.

According to its news release dated April 8, the group’s demands include “safe staffing that allows nurses to provide safe and therapeutic care; and pandemic readiness protections that require the hospitals to invest in personal protective equipment stockpiles and comply with California’s PPE stockpile law.”

On Monday, Sutter issued a statement calling the strike “costly” and “disruptive.”

Sutter officials added, “We are hopeful CNA shares our desire to reach an agreement and enable our nurses to turn their focus back to the patients the union has asked them to walk away from.”

You can reach Staff Writer Colin Atagi at colin.atagi@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @colin_atagi.