By There’s good news and there’s bad news. In a special edition of good news/bad news this week, we present one news item that can be viewed as good or bad, depending on your stance on the issue.
Good or Bad? You decide:
As many as 23,000 California nurses may be on strike this week, protesting reductions in worker’s healthcare coverage and retirement benefits. Spearheaded by the California Nurses Association, union officials say this will be the largest-ever nurses’ strike in the U.S. Sutter Health and Kaiser Permanente hospitals are the targets of the walk-outs, and picketers were outside the Kaiser Los Angeles Medical center Wednesday morning. Nurse-to-patient ratio was also cited as a concern prompting the protest, with officials saying that patients are sometime put in danger when hospitals do not adhere to ratio guidelines.
The protest is planned to last from one to three days, depending on the area in California, with most Northern California nurses confining their walk-out period to a 24 hour span beginning at 7 a.m. Thursday morning. Kaiser officials said they will provide high quality healthcare during the strike.
Let us hear from you! Are you a part of the strike or know a nurse who is? Do you applaud the stand for nurses’ rights, or is the strike unnecessary?
Sources:
Southern California Public Radio
The Sacramento Bee
