Beverly Hospital, Lahey Danvers Nurses Vote To Authorize Strike

BEVERLY, MA — Nurses at three North Shore medical centers — including Beverly Hospital and Lahey Outpatient Center in Danvers — voted Wednesday to authorize a three-day strike amid ongoing contract negotiations.

The union representing the nurses said Wednesday's vote is "to protest their administration’s failure to ensure appropriate staffing conditions and a competitive wage structure that would allow the recruitment and retention of the nursing staff needed to deliver quality patient care."

The nurses union argues that the medical centers of Northeast Hospital Corp. are chronically understaffed with the medical centers routinely using mandatory overtime shifts to compensate for the lack of proper recruitment of nurses.

"We have been urging our administration for a year to work with us to address a longstanding staffing crisis, as they fail to recognize the urgency to retain and recruit valuable, experienced nurses in our community hospitals," said Larn Beard, RN, a Special Care Nursery RN at Beverly Hospital and co-chair of the nurses local bargaining unit with the Massachusetts Nurses Association, in a statement provided to Patch. "We have lost hundreds of nurses in the two-plus years (of the COVID-19 health crisis), nearly 40 percent of our nursing workforce, and that exodus has accelerated as more than 100 nurses have left in the last six months alone.

"We were forced to hold this strike vote in order to move our administration to finally come to a reasonable agreement that supports our call for competitive wages and benefits, and a commitment to maintaining appropriate staffing levels that we need to begin to heal our hospitals and it's nurses so we can provide the safest care for our patients and our community."

The union said the vote does not mean a strike is imminent but gives the negotiating committee the authorization to call a strike, which would then give the hospitals 10 days' notice that a work action was about to take place.

"We deeply value the contributions of our nurse colleagues, clinical teams and staff," Kim Perryman, RN, Chief Nursing Officer at Beverly and Addison Gilbert Hospitals, said in a statement to Patch Thursday afternoon. "Throughout our contract negotiations with the Massachusetts Nurses Association, our goal has been to reach a fair agreement that allows us to retain
and recruit nurses that share our commitment to providing outstanding care to our community."

Perryman said she believes the issues where the sides remain apart are "limited" and is "disappointed" in the strike-authorization vote.

"Our leadership will continue its good faith efforts to achieve agreement and assure that our nurse colleagues immediately see the benefits of a new contract," Perryman said.

The union said the low staffing levels and low compensation levels compared to area hospitals have led to the departure of 320 nurses across Beverly Hospital, Lahey Danvers and Addison Gilbert Hospital in Gloucester over the past three years. The union said 100 of those departures have happened since last August.

The union contends that Northeast nurses are paid between 11 and 16 percent less than nurses at hospitals within 30 miles, including Salem Hospital.

"We have consistently reinforced the important need to meet the rapidly changing market dynamics for wages," Perryman countered. "In our most recent wage proposal, we proposed significant wage increases for nurses at all levels to ensure that Beverly and AddisonGilbert Hospitals are consistent with market rates at other community hospitals in our region.

"In addition, we have proposed contract terms that would support high-quality staffing, decrease medical insurance premiums, and address other issues raised by the MNA."

The union said the objectives of the new contract demands are to add more nurses and add wage and differential increases to allow the hospitals to recruit and retain needed staff. They are also seeking "affordable health care" as hospital staffs emerge from more than two years of the COVID-19 health crisis.

"The devastation of seeing our community suffer is unifying the nurses at Beverly Hospital and Addison Gilbert Hospital," said Arianna Marquis, RN, a nurse who has worked on one of Beverly Hospital’s medical-surgical/telemetry floors for 11 years. "The overwhelming burdens of unsafe staffing due to higher patient acuity and low wages have been issues long before the pandemic of 2020.

"These conditions have driven too many nurses away, and the majority who left were brilliant, compassionate caregivers who felt unsafe, understaffed and underpaid."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)