Support The RGH Nurses Fighting For You!

Stand with the nurses who are fighting to improve patient care in Rochester!

Amidst growing concern for patient safety, the roughly 900 registered nurses of Rochester General Hospital have voted by over 90% to authorize a strike. Nurses have been in negotiations with hospital administration since October, seeking improvements in staffing levels and patient care. With very little progress from management, the nurses are planning to strike to protest persistent unfair labor practices and demonstrate the urgency of addressing patient safety conditions.

RGH recently received a "D" grade in patient safety. This is a result of chronic understaffing and loss of experienced nurses. Nurses are being asked to take care of up to 10 patients, when they should have no more than 4 or 5. It's even worse in the Emergency Department, where nurses can be tasked with caring for 20-30 patients at a time, and patients sit in their own waste in chairs and hallways because whole units full of beds upstairs are closed for lack of nurses. Research shows these conditions can lead to increased mortality, hospital-acquired infections, pressure ulcers, and falls. When our patients fall, nurses want to be there to catch them, but RGH administration has been letting us all down. Hospitals in Buffalo, Syracuse, and throughout the region have agreed to invest in staffing to address these very issues; despite having more money than many of those other facilities, RGH has refused. Instead, as hospital assets and executive salaries and bonuses have ballooned, nurses have been forced to do more with less.

The decision to strike was not taken lightly. For many years at RGH, there has been a strike in slow motion: except instead of everyone walking out together and walking back in together a few days later, nurses have been leaving in a constant stream and never coming back. Our commitment to our patients led us to this action, as we have reached our breaking point.

With over 90% of RGH nurses voting in favor of a strike, the notice was hand-delivered to administration on July 21st. Nurses will walk out on Thursday, August 3rd at 7am and are asking for community support both on the picket line and monetarily. An emergency strike account has been opened for donations in support of our efforts. While the large majority of nurses are ready and able to forgo a few days' pay to stand up for our patients, these funds will go to nurses who are facing particularly difficult financial hardships during the time of the strike and potential lockout.

Thank you sincerely for your support,

The Rochester Union of Nurses & Allied Professionals (RUNAP)

**Our Goal remains to avert a strike, but the ball is in management's court. We need safe staffing guarantees in the contract or we will walk! Should we succeed in achieving this and averting a strike, funds will be rolled over into a future strike fund. RUNAP is a completely independent union created and run by the staff nurses of RGH. We love and appreciate our community. Thank you for your support.**

Disclosure on the process of distribution: nurses will apply for hardship funds, giving information on the amount of their missed pay and the circumstances of their hardship, and these applications will be processed and decided upon by a committee of RGH nurses who will themselves not be receiving any of the funds. The funds will be delivered via check to the affected nurses in advance of their missed paychecks on Friday, 8/18. Any remaining funds will be rolled over against any future need in a separate RUNAP account for this purpose alone.