Nurses Prep For Strike Next Week
Thursday, February 24, 2011(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
The pungent smells of markers and glue sticks filled the
basement room at Plymouth Congregational Church in Northeast Washington last
night as dozens of nurses made signs in preparation for next
week’s 1-day strike March 4 at Washington Hospital Center. “We feel
let down by our hospital,” said emergency room nurse Peggy Dinkel, who had
spoken at the Wisconsin solidarity rally downtown earlier in the day and was now
supervising all five of her young kids as they assembled picket signs. “They
work really hard,” said son Nate, 14. “My mom comes home from working and
she’s still talking about her patients.” Dinkel has been a nurse for 15
years, working in the ER for the last five, and says “we’re all just really
frustrated with the short-staffing, the lack of equipment, the lack of
respect.” Likening current management-staff relations to one where the nurses
“just feel like we’re getting beat on all the time. You wouldn’t put up
with that in a relationship and the only way to get it to stop is to walk
away.” All around her, nurses in bright red NNU scrubs busily glued, scrawled
and stapled picket signs. “We bargained through Tuesday and start again on
Friday said NNU’s Ken Zinn, “so the hospital has a few days to come to their
sense and avert this strike. The nurses are fed up with struggling with patient
care issues. They’re resolved, their unity is strong and they’re ready.”
- report/photo by Chris Garlock