Signs on the picket line explained the main issues in the strike, "No More Mandatory Overtime" and "Safe Staffing Should Be Mandatory."

The nurses are members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), which organizes about 80 hospitals in this state.

The strike, the first by Brockton nurses, comes one year after a victorious strike by nurses at St. Vincent Hospital, in Worcester, Massachusetts, who won a contract that limited mandatory overtime and gave the nurses the right to refuse overtime if they felt too ill or tired to work well.

Since the St. Vincent strike, nurses at University of Massachusetts Medical Center and Providence Hospital have had similar limits on forced overtime placed in their contracts.

Through the negotiations leading up to the strike the hospital agreed to the overtime limits that have been established since the St. Vincent strike--eight times a year, four hours at a time. The Brockton nurses, however, want language in the contract that commits the hospital to exercise its best efforts to maintain adequate staffing without resorting to mandatory overtime.

Barbara Cooke, a medical-surgical nurse with 17 years at Brockton Hospital and a member of the negotiating committee, told the Boston Globe that in previous negotiations, the hospital had made verbal promises to limit mandatory overtime, which has instead increased. "We don’t trust them," she said.

In a May 18 editorial, the Boston Globe reported that according to a recent study, "Patients on understaffed wards are more likely to suffer from pneumonia, urinary tract infections, gastrointestinal bleeding, and shock. Their hospital stays are longer and the researchers said short staffing could be a factor in thousands of deaths annually. At Brockton Hospital, nurses are threatening to strike over what they see as that hospital’s refusal to staff adequately and avoid mandatory overtime."

The night before the walkout 200 nurses and their supporters participated in a rally at a local church. There Jeanette Cammarata, with 15 years’ service, said in an interview, "I never thought I would have to go on strike, to picket, for staffing issues and patient safety. By us going on strike hopefully it will prevent others from having to do the same thing."

Nurses from half a dozen local hospitals were joined by members of the Building Trades, Fire Fighters, and teachers union. A delegation from St. Vincent Hospital presented a symbolic torch to the Brockton nurses’ negotiating committee with "St. Vincent Hospital 2000" and "Brockton Hospital 2001" written on its flames.

Besides the staffing and mandatory overtime issue, pay is also an issue. The union ran a full page ad in the May 24 edition of the Brockton Enterprise titled, "An Open Letter to the Residents of Greater Brockton From the Registered Nurses of Brockton Hospital."

It explained, "The hospital is currently offering us a mere 3 percent raise for each year of a three-year contract. We expect and deserve double that and we are not ashamed to demand it. We are insulted by the lack of respect we have received from our management. We are dismayed that while we are forced to go on strike for that respect, our CEO Norman Goodman is being paid more than $500,000 per year, and is given a Mercedes Benz by the hospital. We are equally dismayed that he was awarded a 27 percent raise in the last year, at the same time he proposes to give his nurses only 3 percent each year."

To win public opinion and counter the nurses’ demand for more pay, the hospital placed a full-page ad in the Enterprise, May 24. With a chart and map showing Brockton nurses’ wages are the highest among eight area hospitals organized by the MNA, it posed, "So Why Strike?"

On the picket line a striking nurse explained that the ad conveniently leaves out Boston hospitals that are only 25 miles away and pay more, while it includes hospitals nearly 100 miles away that pay less.

The first day of the strike a Superior Court judge issued an injunction that ordered pickets not to obstruct any of the driveways or entryways to the hospital. The hospital had submitted affidavits of two doctors who said their entry to the hospital "was impeded, but not prohibited, by strikers walking slowly across the driveway entrances to the hospital."

Brockton police have interpreted the judge’s order to mean pickets cannot even march across driveways if they deem it delays anyone’s entry.

MNA spokesperson David Schildmeier said the union will appeal the injunction. "Walking across entryways has been an accepted picketing practice ever since hospitals were first subject to strike action," he said. "This is the first time we know of that this kind of order has come down from the courts."

The injunction, Schildmeier said, "is part of a strategy to silence the nurses."

Ted Leonard is a meat packer in the Boston area. Sarah Ullman, a garment worker, contributed to this article.  
 
 
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