Brigham and Women’s Hospital nurses and Mass General Brigham management will resume negotiations on Saturday morning, a health system spokesperson said after both parties declared Thursday night no contract deal was struck after hours of private talks.
The parties will return to the bargaining table at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, MGB spokesperson Jessica Pastore told reporters during a virtual briefing Friday afternoon as hospital leaders detailed their strategy to preserve patient care during an open-ended nurse strike that is scheduled to begin at 7 a.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 14.
The Massachusetts Nurses Association, which represents the 4,000 Brigham nurses who are preparing to walk off the job, fired back Friday that MGB will not have its “full negotiating team” on hand. Pastore, asked about the MNA’s claim, said that’s “not true” and that the “full team will be there.”
“Brigham nurses will not miss an opportunity to move this process forward, reach a fair contract agreement, and avert the strike to ensure the safety of the community,” MNA spokesperson Joe Markman said. “We can only hope MGB will decide to change their course and work toward a solution to a crisis caused by the billionaire board members who run MGB.”
Meanwhile, a three-day strike was averted at another Boston hospital on Friday.
Nearly 2,000 nurses at Boston Medical Center ratified a three-year contract that features “meaningful wage increases,” 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East announced. Hourly wages for first-year nurses will increase from $38.05 to $42.63 over their first two years, and there’s a pathway for nurses to earn $104 an hour at the top of the wage scale.
At the Brigham, nurses are seeking cost-of-living increases, limits on the use of temporary travel nurses and affordable health insurance, among other demands. The union said it offered “substantial compromises” Thursday in an attempt to avert a strike.
MGB leaders stressed Friday they have a road map to manage the potential indefinite strike and minimize patient disruptions, drawing on the lessons they learned from the five-day work stoppage this summer.
“We have a playbook we’ve established in July that we have refined, worked countless hours to improve and strengthen,” said Pamela Linzer, the Brigham’s associate chief nursing officer.
Linzer said the hospital plans to bring on around 1,600 to 2,000 temporary nurses and expects a “great proportion” to be the same nurses who filled in during the July strike. Those nurses are already “fully onboarded” and “fully trained,” Linzer said.
“So that’s also very reassuring to share that,” Linzer said. “They know our processes and procedures, and they’re ready to hit the ground running at seven in the morning on Wednesday.”
Dr. Paul Biddinger, MGB’s chief preparedness and continuity officer, said the hospital is “prepared, fully staffed and fully open to care for our patients.” The Brigham will “briefly” pause new admissions at 5 a.m. Wednesday as the nursing teams transition and the strike gets underway. Some care delivered at other MGB facilities, including in Foxborough, will be steered toward the system’s Boston hospitals, he said.
“We’ve been trying to reach out to all of our patients across the Brigham community, including patients in the neonatal ICU, patients with scheduled procedures, current inpatients, and those who have primary care clinicians at Brigham and Women’s to make sure they’re aware of the upcoming potential strike, and make sure that they understand that we have robust plans in place to be able to continue the delivery of high-quality care,” Biddinger said.
The hospital is using “real-time safety monitoring and clear escalation pathways for any issues that can arise,” Biddinger said. Department of Public Health inspectors will also be on site daily throughout the strike, said Karen Fiumara, MGB’s vice president of patient safety.
Brigham nurses had authorized a one-day strike in July, but the action turned into a five-day work stoppage as the hospital hired temporary workers. Linzer said there’s not a minimum time period for the replacement nurses to report to the hospital starting next week.
“They’re putting in an expected date that they’ll be able to stay,” Linzer said. “Some of them are two weeks. Some of them are for as long as the strike goes. It’s nurse-dependent.”
The replacement nurses will work 12-hour shifts, Linzer said.
“The agency that we use is Joint Commission-accredited, and they have the gold standard,” Linzer said. “And so we’ve been working with them now for many months, and they are top-notch.”
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