10-18-07, 9:27 am

About 5,000 registered nurses at 15 Northern California hospitals struck last week to improve patient care.

Members of the California Nurses Association walked off the job at the giant Sutter Health chain, which includes some of the largest hospitals in the San Francisco area to protest rigid corporate rules that cause inadequate staffing as well as poor work conditions and job benefits.

The nurses' union Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro said: 'The nurses are concerned with the impact of staffing decisions on patient care protections at Sutter hospitals, reductions in health care coverage and retirement security for Sutter RNs and management proposals to eliminate essential patient care services.'

At a press conference last week, cancer nurse Jan Rodolfo called on Sutter to bargain in good faith. 'As nurses, we've been bargaining since May,' she said, 'and have tried everything that we can think of, and have really exhausted the bargaining process to try to get Sutter to change its tune at the bargaining table and actually give us what nurses and community patients need.'

'We believe their approach at the bargaining table,' Rodolfo continued, 'will jeopardize patients, it jeopardizes nurses and their families, and it jeopardizes communities.'

The nurses are also protesting Sutter's corporate downsizing policies that are closing hospitals and putting needy patients in jeopardy in order to improve corporate profits.

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