ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) —
With just hours left in its contract, Mission Nurses United isn’t giving up hopes of reaching an agreement with the hospital and averting a strike.
Mission Hospital and its unionized nurses have been at the bargaining table for months, trying to settle their differences. However, the current contract ends on July 2 and there appear to be several sticking points to a new one.
“We are still very much a work in progress,” registered nurse Emma Fitzpatrick said Tuesday evening. “We’re still working for some of the bigger items, like better wage pay, meal breaks.”
Fitzpatrick said the union and the hospital had made progress in other areas, such as preventing workplace violence.
CLOCK TICKING ON TALKS TO AVERT NURSES’ STRIKE AT MISSION HOSPITAL
Mission Health officials on Friday called a strike “unnecessary, given the serious efforts we have invested in bargaining since mid-April.”
Fitzpatrick described the nurses as “frustrated” but willing to keep working.
“Nobody wants the strike to be the end goal,” she said.
More bargaining sessions have been booked, Fitzpatrick said.
A National Nurses United Communications spokesperson explained that at the end of the contract, nurses would legally be able to strike, but that doesn’t mean they will.
“If they decide to strike, they are required to give management 10 days of notice,” she said.
If the nurses vote to strike, “that notice isn’t necessarily timed to when the vote happened,” she said.
In other words, they could choose to give notice of a strike at any time after the vote.
STATE FINDS MISSION HOSPITAL IN COMPLIANCE AFTER MONTHS OF SCRUTINY