Fight for Patient Safety: Bosses’ ‘Gag’ Order Triggers Temple Hospital Nurses’ Strike

PHILADELPHIA, April 5 — One of the cherished notions that the bosses push in defense of their capitalist system is that workers have the right to freedom of speech. Nurses and allied professionals at Temple Hospital are learning that this “right” can disappear quickly when it interferes with the bosses’ profit-making.

During contract negotiations Temple bosses insisted on a “gag clause” that would allow them to fire nurses for speaking out publicly against poor quality care. One nurse was told by a boss, “if you want your constitutional rights you will have to go somewhere else.”

This gag clause is one of the main issues that led the nurses to strike on March 31. Others are demands for safe staffing levels, keeping tuition reimbursement for the children of employees, and no increase in co-pays for health insurance.

The bosses have hired 850 scab nurses to replace the over 1,000 nurses on strike. They are paying these scabs as much as $10,000 per week. According to union calculations the cost of hiring scabs for two weeks would be enough to settle the contract negotiations. Union estimates are that Temple has spent $5 million over and above regular costs for the first week of the strike and will spend $4.5 million per week for the remainder of the strike. The profit of the agency providing the scab nurses, HealthSource Global Staffing, is estimated at $1.1 million per week. The cost of the tuition benefit that Temple is trying to take away is $1.1 million per year!

PLP is taking the first steps in supporting the Temple strike. We are attending support demonstrations and talking to Temple workers. In our collective discussions of the strike we are identifying the strengths and weaknesses of this particular struggle and the general struggle over health care in the failing capitalist economy. It is obvious that politics is primary over economics in this strike. Why would the bosses be willing to spend so much money on scabs if this were not true?

The most positive aspect of the strike is the strikers fighting for the right to defend patient safety more than for their own economic interests. Temple’s insistence on the gag clause was the real trigger for the strike. Some of the right-wing union leadership’s statements suggest that this clause was put forth by management as a demand that would be impossible for the nurses to accept, in order to force a strike. PLP’ers think that the matter goes deeper than this.

The capitalist class has a long-range plan for developing fascist healthcare. In order to achieve their goals they must break the traditional idea that the nurses’ primary obligation is to advocate for the best interests of their patients. It is significant that the bosses are challenging this long-standing tradition in a hospital whose patients are primarily black and Latino workers. We must increase the understanding of this racist gag clause as a step on the road to fascism.

Stop All Scabs!

The nurses are using the media to build community support. Temple students are circulating a petition supporting the strikers and denouncing the “ridiculous” management demands. While these efforts are important they are no substitute for a commitment to winning the strike by stopping scab nurses from crossing the picket lines. Other nursing strikes have been lost because scabs were allowed to work until the bosses were able to hire permanent replacements for the strikers.

Another weakness of the strike is the lack of support from 1199C Hospital Workers Union. Tensions between the union leaders over raiding have led to this situation, the product of a long history of divisive leadership by the bureaucrats in both organizations. 1199’ers should form rank-and-file committees to support the striking nurses and techs in whatever way they can. For example, 1199’ers could join the strikers’ picket lines at breaks and before and after work. In the past, when other unions struck at other Philadelphia hospitals and the 1199 leadership refused to formally support the strike, 1199’ers organized to do everything from picketing to fundraising to support leaflets to secret sabotage to planning sick-outs. All this was done without the union leadership, but, most importantly, with the involvement of PLP communists.

The most significant weakness of the strike is the lack of communist ideas and leadership. The local PLP collective does not have a strong base at Temple but we can begin to have an influence by talking with the few workers we know at Temple and the stronger base we have at other hospitals in the city. We must win them to see that no matter what the outcome of this strike might be, we can only defeat the increasing attacks on healthcare by building the Progressive Labor Party and fighting for communist revolution.