WICHITA —Registered nurses at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis and Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph hospitals in Wichita will strike on Tuesday to protest management’s resistance to bargain in good faith with RNs for union contracts that would help correct the endemic staffing crisis, according to a media release from National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU).
Nurses at Ascension Seton Medical Center, in Austin, Texas are also part of the job action. The strike was set to begin at 7a.m., according to the union web site.
Driven by their concerns about patient safety, these will be the largest nurse strikes in Kansas and Texas history, according to the union.
Ascension management’s punitive three-day lockout of nurses who go on strike has failed to intimidate the nurses. Among the 2,000 registered nurses at Ascension via Christi St. Joseph Hospital and Ascension via Christi St. Francis Hospital and Ascension Seton Medical Center Austin, Texas, there is now even greater momentum and motivation to speak out and demand management negotiate first contracts with its RNs to improve the health of their patients and communities.
“Management’s retaliatory threats are despicable, but union nurses won’t give up on our fight for our patients,” said Kris Fuentes, a registered nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at Ascension Seton Medical Center in Austin. “Ascension’s dangerous staffing practices disrupt our ability to provide quality care and put our patients at risk every day. This is a clear sign Ascension would rather use its vast resources to delay improvement than to invest in the care our patients and our communities deserve with appropriate staffing.”