Nurses at Newton-Wellesley Hospital Picketed, Voted on Strike

NEWTON, MA - Registered nurses at Newton-Wellesley Hospital held an informational picket Wednesday afternoon as they voted on whether or not to strike.

The vote came as contract disputes between the nurses union and Partners Healthcare, which owns the hospital, reached their peak. In a press release, the Massachusetts Nurses Association said that nurses are responding to what they believe is Partners' failure to provide adequate patient care and working conditions for staff while rewarding top executives with pay raises. The organization represents approximately 1,000 nurses at Newton-Wellesley.

"Partners HealthCare is a non-profit organization that has generated nearly $2 billion in profits over the last five years," Laurie Andersen, a registered nurse in the emergency department at NWH and co-chair of the MNA/NNU Local Bargaining Unit, said in the release. "For Partners to make that kind of money and yet refuse to invest in meaningful improvements to patient care and nurse staffing conditions at two of its acute care hospitals is disrespectful to the communities Partners serves and insulting to the nurses it employs."

An informational picket was also held at the North Shore Medical Center, where the union represents 600 nurses.

This is the second time in the past year contract negotiations between both sides reached a boiling point; in June, a one-year contract was agreed upon after nurses threatened to strike, according to the Boston Globe.

"Our nurses are among some of the highest paid nurses in community hospitals and they deserve to be," Brian O'Dea, a spokesman for Newton-Wellesley Hospital, said. "The hospital has made an offer so that our nurses will remain some of the most highly-paid."

O'Dea also clarified that the demonstration did not disrupt daily hospital operations.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to the picket as a 'protest.' It is not a protest and is rather an 'informational picket.'