Philly Hospital Workers Celebrate Strike's Settlement
Carolyn Humphries, a gastroenterology technician and member of PASNAP, has uploaded a great video documenting her union’s strike at the Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia the past four weeks (it's below). She captured her co-workers’ powerful stories as they stood up to a hospital willing to spend millions on scabs every week in an attempt to divide and destroy the union.
They held tough and won a settlement that
- Disallowed the “gag clause” that would have forbidden workers to speak publicly about unsafe conditions in the hospital
- Preserved the common contract expiration of RNs and professional/technical workers, as well as the union shop
- Withdrew cuts to weekend/shift differentials
- Restored tuition benefits, and extended them to all employees, not just union-represented ones.
The hospital crowed that it raised health care costs to be “consistent with other employee groups”—the cheapest plan will now charge 10 percent of premium cost—and will pay no raises in the contract’s first year.
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Members ratified the deal by a vote of 1,045 to 30 last week.
“We are returning to work just as we left—together. We are even more unified now than when the strike began,” said Jackie Silver, president of the professional and technical union, in a statement.
