Montco Nurses Strike Gets Support From State Reps, County Leaders

EAST NORRITON, PA — Several prominent local leaders will join the healthcare workers picket line Monday in Montgomery County as nurses rally for safe working conditions.

Montgomery County Commissioner Jamila Winder, State Sen. Amanda Cappelletti, and State Reps. Matt Bradford and Greg Scott will all be on hand at Suburban Community Hospital in East Norriton.

The picket line comes amid ongoing contract negotiations between Suburban and their owners, Prime Healthcare. Nurses say that staffing is dangerously low, and that Prime's healthcare plans for their own employees prioritize greed over actual patient care.

See also: Montgomery Co. Nurses To Rally, Citing 'Dangerous' Working Conditions

"When nurses are routinely required to care for more patients than is safe, it’s a crisis for both
patients, who receive inadequate care, and nurses, who daily risk both their license and moral
injury to care for more patients at a time than is possible to do safely," the Suburban General Nurses Association told Patch. "To make matters worse, chronic short-staffing tends to snowball, as it leads to high turnover rates at hospitals and staffing that becomes more and more unsafe – and not just for patients."

Leaders and hundreds of nurses are expected to gather at noon.

Beyond dangerously low staffing that is impacting bedside care, nurses say Prime has provided "grossly inadequate" health insurance, and has attempted to cut sick leave for nurses in the new contract.

“We’ve been a union for more than 50 years, and we’d never been outside the hospital until Prime bought us in 2016,” Shannan Giambrone, an ICU nurse at Suburban and the longtime co-president of the union. “Since then, we’ve been outside every year, fighting to protect our patients and our profession.”

Prime told Patch that they are invested in the negotiation process.

"We are committed to bargaining in good faith with the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP) leadership to reach an agreement in the best interests of our hospital, our employees, and, most importantly, those whom we serve," Michelle Aliprantis, a spokeswoman for the hospital, said in a statement. "Our goal is to move forward together as a united team, continuing to ensure Suburban Community Hospital remains the best place for quality and compassionate patient care and a great place to work."

The union says that Prime is able to staff all of their Pennsylvania hospitals at the appropriate level. They point to how the network has done so in California, which has state-mandated nurse to patient ratios.

"At bargaining for the previous contract, their (Prime's) attorney told the Union that they do not have to because there is no law to force them to do so," the union added.

Nurses at Lower Bucks Hospital, a facility also owned by Prime, will hold a similar rally and protest on Oct. 30.

Prime owns 45 hospitals in 14 states and is facing similar protests and strikes from workers across the country, including in Los Angeles.