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Armstrong County Memorial Hospital nurses authorize strike

Steve Mellon/Post-Gazette

Armstrong County Memorial Hospital nurses authorize strike

Nurses at Armstrong County Memorial Hospital have voted overwhelmingly to strike, leaving the decision in the hands of the union bargaining committee to give the hospital a 10-day notice of a walkout.

A three-year contract with ACMH Nurses United expired in July, with staff recruitment and retention at the center of the negotiations, the union said. On Wednesday, nurses voted by a 94% margin to authorize a strike.

The hospital said it had made a contract offer that would raise average wages over 15% over three years and also criticized the possible work stoppage.

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“A threatened work stoppage does not help either side in a negotiation, nor the residents of the community that we serve and who are in need,” Anne Remaley, Vice President of Human Resources, said in a prepared statement. “We need to continue to meet the health care needs of this community, today, tomorrow and into the future.”

For nurses, the core issue was staffing.

“We want to provide excellent care and we can’t do that when we aren’t staffed appropriately and nurses are assigned too many patients at once,” Cassie Wood, a registered nurse and president of ACMH Nurses United, said in a prepared statement. “This isn’t a problem without a solution — the hospital can commit the necessary resources to the front lines, something a lot of hospitals are already doing.”

The strike authorization vote allows the union’s bargaining committee to issue a 10-day strike notice to the hospital if it deems it necessary.

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ACMH Nurses United, which represents 213 nurses at Armstrong Memorial, is an affiliate of the Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, which represents more than 9,000 nurses and health care workers in the state. The strike vote at Armstrong County Memorial Hospital came the same week that PASNAP and other health care unions lobbied lawmakers in Harrisburg for passage of the Patient Safety Act, which would set nurse to patient staffing standards.

The bill, which has 105 co-sponsors in the House, has been hung up in the House Health Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Kathy L. Rapp, a Republican from Warren, PASNAP spokeswoman said. The bill can’t come up for a vote before it comes out of committee.

Kris B. Mamula: kmamula@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699

First Published: January 27, 2022, 3:56 p.m.

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Dozens of nurses and other health care workers recently gathered on the Rachel Carson Bridge to call attention to the staffing challenges they face during the pandemic.  (Steve Mellon/Post-Gazette)
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