The hundreds of union nurses who have been locked out of their jobs at Kapiʻolani Medical Center since Saturday will lose their health insurance if the labor contract dispute with hospital management is not resolved by the end of the month.
The Hawaiʻi Nurses Association said it will direct its 500 to 600 nurses to apply for unemployment benefits and COBRA health insurance if that happens. The union said it has a strike fund, and nurses said they can be paid about $70 a day if they take part in the demonstrations.
The lockout followed the nurses' one-day strike last Friday. The union said the sticking point is mandatory patient-to-staff ratios, also referred to as a staffing matrix.
Hilton Raethel, the president of the Healthcare Association of Hawaii, which represents many hospitals and long-term care facilities across the state, explained staffing ratios and labor trends across the industry.
"Running a hospital is a very, very complex operation, and there's all sorts of different things that are changing throughout shifts, throughout days, and from week to week," he said. "Some of the unions are saying, well, we want a fixed patient-staff ratio. Well, life is just not that simple."
"Just on the staffing side, what type of staff you have, how many support staff you have, how long people have been there, how long they've been on that particular floor, whether it's a NICU, an ICU, a CCU, a med surg floor, that makes a huge difference. And then on the patient side, that also makes a huge difference," Raethel continued.
He said patients vary considerably from those who need a couple of days of post-surgery care to those who have combinations of ailments like heart failure and pneumonia.
"Nursing is an incredible profession. It takes a huge amount of dedication, a lot of skill, a lot of training to become a nurse, and we have phenomenal nurses here in Hawaiʻi," he said. "Unfortunately, we've got this labor action that's going on right now. But what we all have to realize is, at the end of the day, we all have to work together."
Negotiators for Kapiʻolani Medical Center management and the union are scheduled to return to the bargaining table Thursday. The nurses have not had a contract since November 2023, when their last one expired.
The union said it had some nurses demonstrating in front of Kapiʻolani on Wednesday morning. State Sen. Kurt Fevella also called a news conference at the Hawaiʻi State Capitol to advocate for a resolution.
Gov. Josh Green's office said the state has been contacted about possibly intervening in contract negotiations. In a statement provided by the office, Hawai‘i Attorney General Anne Lopez said, "No legal basis, however, gives the governor the authority to intervene, even when requested by one party, in negotiations between a private union and a private employer."
He can, however, offer support through mediation if both parties request his assistance, Lopez added.
This interview aired on The Conversation on Sept. 18, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
