GREENFIELD — Tensions ran high Wednesday evening at a time when it appeared that nurses and hospital administration — who for months have been on opposing sides of a labor dispute — wanted to get back to work and focus on their patients.
The nurses who participated in the one-day strike Monday were locked out of work from late Sunday to Wednesday night because three days was the minimum amount of time for which administration could secure temporary replacements, according to hospital officials.
But when about 50 nurses and supporters came to Baystate Franklin Medical Center at 7 p.m. Wednesday, only the nurses who were scheduled to work were let in. The local union representatives were escorted out of the building by the Greenfield Police, as the hospital continued to run a “Plan D” — or emergency preparedness plan as they call it — that started Sunday afternoon and is expected to end at 11 a.m Thursday, when all of the nurses who went on strike are expected to have returned for their first shifts.
The nurses and the hospital staff, who have been at odds over a contract dispute for about seven months now, were in dispute of who legally can come into the office.
The nurses, led by their bargaining chairwoman Donna Stern, said it is the right of the union representatives to be able to come into the hospital, as specified in their contract.
The hospital countered and said policy overrides contract in the instance of when an emergency preparedness plan is in action.
The hospital’s Chief Nursing Officer Lisa-Lee Keith said the hospital enacted the “Plan D” Sunday at 2 p.m. in preparation for the strike. The way the Greenfield hospital calls for this emergency plan is by announcing on the speaker system inside the hospital that it is in effect; it is announced three times in a row on the public announcement system. Any nurse who was working a shift at 2 p.m. Sunday, with the lockout formally beginning at 7 p.m., could have heard this message, the hospital said.
The other way hospital staff was informed about the “Plan D” was by its text message system. The texts went out to the hospital’s leadership council, which amounts to about 35 people. There are no nurses under the union on that list, but managers of nurses, including the hospital’s president Cindy Russo and Keith are included. The chief nursing officer said that these text messages then can be sent to the proper channels to inform them if extra staff is needed. In this case, she said no extra staff was needed so no nurses were notified by this text message system.
Baystate Health spokeswoman Jane Albert said that Baystate Franklin Medical Center also enacted a “Plan D” when the nurses went to strike in 2012.
Keith said they could call a “Plan D” for anything that would disrupt the normal activity of the hospital, which ranges in severity.
“Using a disaster code is a serious action and so it was irresponsible for Baystate to use that code at any time to keep out or remove its own nurses from the hospital,” said the local spokesman for the Massachusetts Nurses Association Joe Markman.
Prior to the Greenfield Recorder speaking with the hospital staff, Stern said to the newspaper that the hospital would need to explain what the disaster is in this case: “I’d like to know and I’m sure the community would like to know.”
The evening as a whole did not go as planned though from either side. Russo said she was hoping to greet the nurses who were coming to work as they entered into the building. Stern said she was hoping to make sure all of her fellow nurses were doing well as they came back to work.