Nurses will picket Sutter Health's Sacramento headquarters and nine of its Bay area hospitals Thursday in a dispute over contract negotiations.
Some 4,000 registered nurses represented by California Nurses Association/National Nurses United are participating in the one-day walkout at the Sutter facilities including those in Berkeley, Oakland and Vallejo.
The walkout, which comes months after a massive demonstration by thousands of nurses at 30 Sutter and Kaiser Permanente hospitals in Northern California in September, will not affect Sacramento-area Sutter Health facilities, union officials said. Sutter General, Sutter Memorial and Sutter Davis hospitals are nonunion. Sutter's facilities in Auburn and Roseville each reached new three-year deals with nurses earlier in the year, said Sutter officials.
The nurses' union had threatened the one-day strike if Sutter officials did not pull what union officals called "major concessions in patient care protections" from the bargaining table.
Sacramento-based Sutter Health is seeking concessions from registered nurses at its Bay Area hospitals. The concessions include sharp hikes in health premium and retirement contributions and elimination of paid sick leave and the ability to advocate for patients.
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.
Call The Bee's Darrell Smith, (916) 321-1040.
• Read more articles by Darrell Smith
What You Should Know About Comments on Sacbee.com
Sacbee.com is happy to provide a forum for reader interaction, discussion, feedback and reaction to our stories. However, we reserve the right to delete inappropriate comments or ban users who can't play nice. (See our full terms of service here.)
Here are some rules of the road:
• Keep your comments civil. Don't insult one another or the subjects of our articles. If you think a comment violates our guidelines click the "Report Abuse" link to notify the moderators. Responding to the comment will only encourage bad behavior.
• Don't use profanities, vulgarities or hate speech. This is a general interest news site. Sometimes, there are children present. Don't say anything in a way you wouldn't want your own child to hear.
• Do not attack other users; focus your comments on issues, not individuals.
• Stay on topic. Only post comments relevant to the article at hand.
• Do not copy and paste outside material into the comment box.
• Don't repeat the same comment over and over. We heard you the first time.
• Do not use the commenting system for advertising. That's spam and it isn't allowed.
• Don't use all capital letters. That's akin to yelling and not appreciated by the audience.
• Don't flag other users' comments just because you don't agree with their point of view. Please only flag comments that violate these guidelines.
You should also know that The Sacramento Bee does not screen comments before they are posted. You are more likely to see inappropriate comments before our staff does, so we ask that you click the "Report Abuse" link to submit those comments for moderator review. You also may notify us via email at feedback@sacbee.com. Note the headline on which the comment is made and tell us the profile name of the user who made the comment. Remember, comment moderation is subjective. You may find some material objectionable that we won't and vice versa.
If you submit a comment, the user name of your account will appear along with it. Users cannot remove their own comments once they have submitted them.
About Comments
Reader comments on Sacbee.com are the opinions of the writer, not The Sacramento Bee. If you see an objectionable comment, click the "Report Abuse" link below it. We will delete comments containing inappropriate links, obscenities, hate speech, and personal attacks. Flagrant or repeat violators will be banned. See more about comments here.