When Dominique Muldoon joined the strike against Dallas-based Tenet Health at Saint Vincent Hospital in Massachusetts, she did not foresee being out of work for eight months.
“Tenet [Health] is putting profits before patient care, and that’s not what healthcare should be about at all,” Muldoon told Dallas Express.
Muldoon, who has worked as a post-surgical nurse for 19 years, feels that morale is low.
“I get that Tenet has to run a business and make money, but they are stripping the hospital of everything, not putting anything back into it to take care of the patients, and not providing the equipment and staff that we needed,” she said.
The mother of two children and grandmother of four has taken a job outside of St. Vincents while she waits for the strike to be resolved.
“I’m currently doing vaccinations, and that will give me a sense of giving back to my community, and also, I have to put food on the table,” Muldoon said in an interview. “I have to pay my bills, and I want to at least be taking care of patients in some capacity again.”
Muldoon is among 700 nurses who have been on strike in Massachusetts since March 8th, 2021, after more than 18 months of negotiations and advocacy to convince Tenet that conditions for patients are unsafe and need improvement.
“We all went on strike because the hospital would not even talk to us about staffing at one point,” Muldoon added. “They said to us, ‘We understand staffing is a concern to you, but we feel that it’s fine, and we’re not going to talk about it.’ That just blew me away that Tenet is not even willing to talk about staffing, which is our main issue. It was every floor and every unit across the board.”
Last week according to media reports, Tenet announced third-quarter profits of $48 million and total revenues of more than $4 billion. In the first quarter of the year, Tenet reported generating $197 million.
“It may be bigger in Texas, but it ain’t better in Texas,” said Marie Ritacco, one of the Saint Vincent nurses on strike, and vice president of the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA). “I would hope that healthcare professionals in Texas are paying attention. Texas, to me, for this very reason, would be a scary place to be a resident. It’s a right-to-work state, but you have the right to work for what? Less wages, worse benefits, more difficult working conditions, and an unfulfilling career? That’s your right? That’s not a right. That’s a sentence.”
The Massachusetts Nurses Association, which is the nurses’ local bargaining unit, filed eleven charges of unfair labor practice against Tenet with the National Labor Relations Board, resulting in an ongoing investigation.
“The Department of Public Health is aware that there are instances of extreme poor care going on in that institution,” Ritacco told Dallas Express. “I know there are several lawsuits that have been filed against the hospital since we’ve been out of that building. Many patients and family members have come to us and told us what’s going on in there. It’s not a good situation. I’m not sure why there has not been some action taken against them. It’s confounding to me.”
According to an MNA press release, the Saint Vincent Nurse’s Strike is the longest in Massachusetts state history and the longest strike nationwide in the past fifteen years.
“Business practices in Texas are not the same as they are in Massachusetts,” Ritacco added. “That’s an astute observation. Tenet CEO Saum Sutaria needs to come and settle this and settle it now before one more patient has to suffer at the hands of Carolyn Jackson and the minions in that building.”
Carolyn Jackson is the CEO of Saint Vincent Hospital, which contains 300 beds and is located at 123 Summer Street in Worcester.
“They have spent more than a hundred million dollars to prolong the strike, and they just made a profit of $448 million,” said David Schildmeier, director of communications with MNA. “These nurses never had to go on strike. Tenet has had the resources to provide the nurses [with] what they needed to end the strike from the beginning. They are profiting off of the suffering of these patients. Not only have they denied the nurses a return to their positions, but they’ve closed beds and services. The entire community is overwhelmed with patients because Tenet is withholding beds to keep the nurses out on the street.”
Last week, a Massachusetts Congressional Delegation signed a letter that was delivered to Tenet confronting Sutaria and asking that the CEO travel to Worcester, MA, to end the strike.
“We are alarmed and dismayed by Tenet’s efforts to prolong this crisis with their demand that nurses be denied a return to the positions they held, many of them for decades, prior to the strike,” the eleven politicians collectively wrote. “Tenet’s approach violates long-accepted standards for the conclusion of a work stoppage and jeopardizes the safety of the patients who will be subject to care from more inexperienced replacement staff. Of more concern is Tenet’s decision to purposefully close desperately needed beds and eliminate services as a punitive ploy to force the nurses to end their strike, using patients and our communities as pawns in their anti-union strategy.”
Richard Neal (D-Springfield), Jim McGovern (D-Worcester), Lori Trahan (D-Westford), Jake Auchincloss (D-Newton), Katherine Clark (D-Melrose), Seth Moulton (D-Salem), Stephen Lynch (D), Ayanna Pressley (D), and William Keating (D) as well as U.S. Senators Edward Markey (D) and Elizabeth Warren (D) all signed the Oct. 20 letter that was addressed to Sutaria.
“Nurses are going to stay out one day longer until they budge,” Schildmeier told Dallas Express. “They can’t go back. If they go back under the conditions proposed by the hospital, the patients would be less safe than they were when they went out. So, what the hospital has done with their last proposal is make it worse for the nurses, not better.”
As previously reported by Telegram & Gazette, Jackson defiantly pushed back against the strike in a statement online.
“We have made our last, best, and final offer and implemented it. We welcome our nurses back who wish to return to work,” she said.
