Nurses Prep For Strike Next Week

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

The pungent smells of markers and glue sticks filled the basement room at Plymouth Congregational Church in Northeast Washington last night as dozens of nurses made signs in preparation for next week’s 1-day strike March 4 at Washington Hospital Center. “We feel let down by our hospital,” said emergency room nurse Peggy Dinkel, who had spoken at the Wisconsin solidarity rally downtown earlier in the day and was now supervising all five of her young kids as they assembled picket signs. “They work really hard,” said son Nate, 14. “My mom comes home from working and she’s still talking about her patients.” Dinkel has been a nurse for 15 years, working in the ER for the last five, and says “we’re all just really frustrated with the short-staffing, the lack of equipment, the lack of respect.” Likening current management-staff relations to one where the nurses “just feel like we’re getting beat on all the time. You wouldn’t put up with that in a relationship and the only way to get it to stop is to walk away.” All around her, nurses in bright red NNU scrubs busily glued, scrawled and stapled picket signs. “We bargained through Tuesday and start again on Friday said NNU’s Ken Zinn, “so the hospital has a few days to come to their sense and avert this strike. The nurses are fed up with struggling with patient care issues. They’re resolved, their unity is strong and they’re ready.”
- report/photo by Chris Garlock