Albany Med nurses give bargaining update 

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) – Nurses at Albany Medical Center are now working without a contract, after their previous agreement expired at midnight. On Thursday afternoon, nurses rallied across the street from the hospital to give an update on their bargaining negotiations. 

The New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) and Albany Med nurses said after their latest negotiation meeting, on Wednesday, management agreed to head to mediation. It comes after months of failed negotiations.

President and CEO of Albany Med Health System Dr. Dennis McKenna said the community should not be alarmed.

“Care goes uninterrupted here. We will continue to negotiate in good faith. I’m certain that we can get to the right place as we need to,” said McKenna. “We are familiar with the fact that at Ellis Hospital, which is represented by NYSNA, their contract expired and they went almost 14 months without a contract. So we are just on day one.”

Albany Med Nurse Jennifer Kiehl said most of the contract is still in effect but there are some glaring concerns.

“We can’t take issues to arbitration and everyone’s pay is frozen,” said Kiehl, who added her annual increase is due in two weeks but now she’s not going to get that.

She said they want a stronger retention plan. She said the current plan offers a CDTA bus pass, an on-site gym, and they receive a pin every five years, as well as a blanket after 10 years.

NYSNA’s proposal included a couple thousand dollars for nurses who have been there for 15 years or more as retention bonus, and a guarantee that nurses would not have to float after 20 years. 

Kiehl said she asked some very pointed questions at the last negotiation meeting.

“I specifically asked, ‘If your loved one was here in the emergency room and they texted you that they were in the Albany Med E.R. with chest pain, would you be comfortable that they get the care that they needed, without you making some phone calls and pulling some strings?’. One person at the table said, ‘I would go down there. I would physically go down there.’ And no one said they would be comfortable with it,” said Kiehl. “The silence was deafening.”

McKenna said, for the hospital, the main points of contention came down to economics, staffing and having an open versus closed shop, meaning he wants individual nurses to decide if they’d like to join a union.

“It’s not a union busting tactic. What it does is it respects the autonomy of, and the decision of, the nurse and we have many nurses today who have agreed to join the union and that certainly is their right. We also have many other nurses who say they don’t necessarily see that as a choice they wanna make and we respect their decision as well,” said McKenna.

Nurses who rallied with NYSNA on Thursday said negotiations mainly broke down over staffing concerns. 

“I know last weekend in the emergency department there were 110 patients and nine nurses. Over 30 of those were still in the waiting room, so each nurse had about eight to nine patients that they were caring for,” said Kiehl.

“I do know that there are times when an individual may feel as though at a particular moment you know the hospital is busier perhaps than they would expect to have at any given moment, but when we measure our nurses and the volume and acuity here, I’m 100% sure that we are providing safe staffing,” said McKenna.

According to a report, Albany Med has the highest E.R. wait times in the state. McKenna said they are working to fix that.

“We have really strong working relationships with all of the local nursing schools. Many of those students do clinical rotations here at Albany Med, capstones here. It’s an opportunity for us to recruit them and many of them decided to stay and work for us here,” said McKenna.

Nurses said they want to see a sustainable plan in place to recruit and retain experienced nurses and asked why the hospital has prioritized contracts with traveling nurses. 

McKenna said, by law they have to maintain safe staffing levels and asserts the hospital does that. But, in order to do that, they have to augment staffing discrepancies with short-term contract labor.

“Today we have approximately 250 nurses in those roles. That is a number we are ultimately trying to move down, and increase the number of full-time staff. But that is an investment we are willing to make in the short term in order to keep the hospital fully staffed,” said McKenna. “But there is more work to do and ultimately at the end of the day, obviously, we want more people to join our staff so we can continue to meet community needs,” 

McKenna said Albany Med submitted a staffing plan to the Department of Health July 1.

Dozens of nurses had submitted complaints to the Department of Health. The department launched an investigation on June 4. McKenna said they have not received the findings yet.

Both sides said they will continue good faith negotiations, but both have to agree on a mediator first, which can take two weeks. 

Nurses urge the public to attend an informational picket outside of the hospital on August 20.