Nurses Cast "No Confidence" Vote At Washington Hospital Center

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

“Come back with some good results!” called out the nurse. “We’re working on it,” replied OR nurse Valerie Braden (at left), a shop steward for Nurses United at the Washington Hospital Center. Braden was one of two dozen union nurses clad in purple shirts emblazoned with “Nurses United + Fair Contract = SAFE CARE” who fanned out through the WHC Tuesday, collecting signatures on a petition declaring “no confidence” in hospital management. The contract covering 1,600 WHC nurses expires at midnight and a final bargaining session is set for Thursday. It took Braden’s team – which included clinical nurse Greg Pelletier (at right) and Tina Gray (center) – more than an hour to work their way through just two break rooms, as nurses aired their concerns about working conditions in the hospital. “I’ve been here for 17 years,” said a nurse in the Cardiovascular Recovery break room, “and contract after contract the message we get is that management doesn’t value us. So why should I drive 45 minutes for a pay cut?” Nurses United President Dorothy “Dottie” Hararas says she’s hoping for “a 180-degree turn” by hospital management. “They want to slash everything,” Hararas said in the hospital cafeteria Tuesday, the local’s impromptu command center for the day. “All we want  them to do is give us what we earn, give us what we deserve.” Nurses United is also fighting to win back jobs for nurses unfairly fired – including 31-year veteran nurse Geri Lee, who’s reported on the firings at recent Metro Council meetings -- during the February snowstorms that shut down DC for a week. Click here for reports in The Washington Post and Washington City Paper. - report/photos by Chris Garlock