Thursday, April 29, 2010

Tell Sunoco: Workers deserve dignity in their retirement!


Thursday, May 6 at 8:30am
Moore College of Art and Design

20th Street & the Parkway, Philadelphia


Join Sunoco Workers as they let Sunoco know--they won't let them take away their retirement benefits!

They say cut back--USW says, FIGHT back.

To see more details and RSVP, follow this Facebook link:


May 1st is International Workers' Day


and to commemorate the day CATA - the Farmworker Support Committee - will be marching in Kennett Square, PA! All are welcome to participate!

Why are we marching? We need Immigration Reform - a positive solution that recognizes the work of the immigrant community and its important contribution to society as a whole.

Saturday, May 1st, 2010
2 PM- Music
3 PM- Rally
4 PM- March

Nixon Park at the soccer field
North Walnut Street
Kennett Square, PA

Click here for a map.

Come for a little or stay for the whole event!
Questions? Call 610-444-9696


Wednesday, April 28, 2010

COALITION FOR ESSENTIAL SERVICES (CES) FAIR TAX PROPOSAL TO SAVE CITY SERVICES


Introduction:
The City needs upwards of $75 million in order to preserve City services at current levels. CES believes that amount can be raised without imposition of a trash tax or a property tax increase. In addition, the CES proposal would provide a tremendous boost to small businesses throughout the City.

Proposal Summary:
The City would exempt small businesses with sales in the City of less than $500,000 from paying the gross receipts portion of the Business Privilege Tax (BPT). These businesses would still pay the net income portion of the tax. The basic rate of the Gross Receipts Tax (GRT) would be rolled back to its 1996 level of 3 mills or .003%. Together these changes would raise approximately $75 million for the City.  


Detailed Explanation:
1) Based upon 2007 figures, about 84% of all BPT taxpayers -- around 70,000 in all -- have receipts that total less than $500,000 per year. Together those businesses pay very little GRT, less than $8 million per year. If the City exempted all of those small grossing businesses, that would leave about 13,000 GRT taxpayers. Collectively those 13,000 businesses paid about $83 million in GRT in 2007.


2) The rate of the GRT in 2007 was very low -- .0015% -- less than 2/10th of one percent. That is way down from its highest point of .0039%, last levied in 1988. Doubling the 2007 rate to .003% would still leave the rate well below its maximum, and exactly where it was in 1996 after Mayor Rendell had cut the rate by 8%. As we have seen, the 2007 rate raised about $83 million from only the richest businesses. Doubling the rate to the 1996 level would therefore bring in another $83 million from those businesses, or a net of $75 million after deducting the $8 million that was paid by small businesses that our proposal would exempt.

Rationale:
Putting the burden of increased taxes on workers, homeowners and tenants through an increase in real estate taxes – or surrogate real estate taxes like a trash pickup surtax – drives down the disposable income of poor and working people and harms us all. As an alternative, the CES proposal would impose the cost of maintaining current services on business. But in doing so, it would actually reduce the tax load on small businesses, while raising the revenue we need from businesses with the sales volume to best afford it.

Sponsored by
Coalition for Essential Services | Philadelphia Jobs with Justice
For more Information:  215-670-5855  |  director@phillyjwj.org

Monday, April 26, 2010

STILL ON: Happy Hour & Dance Party to benefit striking Temple Nurses and their Families


With DJ  Phantasma Rojo from 5-8pm.
to BENEFIT Temple Nurses & their Families

Thursday, April 29th
5:00 pm -- 8:00 pm
4811 Chester Ave. (W. Philly)

ADMISSION:  Bring one or more of the items requested by the strikers: Non-Perishable Food, Fruits & Veggies, Diapers (all sizes especially 5 & 6), Wipes, Kid snacks, Juice Boxes, Bath Soap, Dish Soap, Laundry Soap, Toilet Paper, Shampoo & Conditioner, Paper Towels

TAKE A STAND AGAINST UNION BUSTING
…AND HAVE A GOOD TIME DOING IT!

Although there is a settlement of the strike, the nurses and professionals who have suffered a loss of wages during this four week-long strike still badly need our help. Please support this benefit!

Since March 31, over 1,500 nurses and technical/professional staff at
Temple University Hospital have been on strike, standing up for
patient safety and against blatant union busting efforts by the TUH
administration.

Temple University Hospital has hired a notorious strike breaking firm
to bring in scab labor from all over the country. In three weeks, they
spent more to try to break the union than the entire four year
contract would have cost them.

But the striking nurses are standing up to the University’s
union-busting.  Now it’s time to stand up for the nurses whose fight
is really the fight of all working people who want decent pay and
benefits for the work we do.

The union is calling on supporters to pitch in with donations of
basic necessities for the families of the striking workers.

Donations can also be dropped off at the A-Space, 4722 Baltimore Ave, if you can’t make the event.  Cash contributions to support the striking nurses' union can be made on-line at www.templewatch.org
or by check payable to PASNAP/Temple Solidarity Fund.  Bring the check to the benefit.

For more information call:  215-724-1618 or email:
phillyactivist@peoplesmail.net

Sponsored by: Philadelphia International Action Center, Jobs With
Justice, A-Space, Bailout the People Movement, Health Care NOW.

Make Big Business pay its fair share!












Join Coalition for Essential Services in demanding that City Council
roll back the recent gross receipt tax cuts, which save big business
tens of millions in tax dollars every year!

Action: Make Big Business pay its fair share!
Thursday, April 29, 2010 @City Hall
8:30am - 10:00am

RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=115225181832715

We will be meeting at 8:30 a.m. outside City Hall doors, then going
inside (bring IDs!) and taking our rally and our message right into
the corridors of power.

Let City Council know that Philadelphians refuse to let our
politicians get away with cutting big businesses a break at a time
when the city can afford it least.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

VIDEO: Over 1,000 Rally and March for Striking Temple Health Care Workers

On a rainy Wednesday evening, April 21, at Temple Hospital on N. Broad Street in Philly, over 1,000 striking nurses and professional workers, and their many supporters from numerous other local unions and the community - including Jobs with Justice, let Temple University management know that union-busting will not be tolerated in Philly.

After several times around the hospital, marchers "greeted" arriving nurses with chants of "Scabs go home" and "Shame on you!" Departing scabs were told to stay home! Most of the private buses transporting scabs were nearly empty (one carried only six), and a van held only a single scab.

Police escorted a private car into the hospital rear lot even though the crowd of union supporters made no threats and acted completely professionally.

Many patients who were able to get to their windows waved in support of the nurses they no doubt wished were treating them instead of scabs.

This was the largest rally so far by the striking workers and their allies, and after three weeks the spirit of solidarity and determination to win is stronger than ever!

Count them! This YouTube video of the marchers who were determined to show that Philly is a union town - and will never be a scab town - was taken by Fabricio Rodriguez.














For regular news and reports, visit the Temple Watch site.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Refusing to Sign Gag Rule, Hospital Workers Walk Out in Philadelphia - UPDATE

Marty Harrison   |  April 19, 2010
Published on Labor Notes (http://www.labornotes.org)


As the strike of 1,500 nurses and professional staff at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia entered its third week, the heat was on the administration to return to the table. Photo: TempleWatch.
As the strike of 1,000 registered nurses and 500 technical and professional staff at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia entered its third week, the heat was on the administration to return to the table and bargain in good faith.

The Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP) has maintained disciplined but lively, loud, and inspired picket lines in front of the facility. A constant flow of Philadelphians answers our call for support with their horns, filling Broad Street with the raucous sounds of struggle.

Make no mistake: This is management’s strike. Temple’s “last, best, and final” offer demands concessions on union rights, benefits and wages, and our constitutional rights—it insists on a gag rule. Six months of negotiations since the contract expired earned us only one change: the $1,000 ratification bonus disappeared.

PASNAP prepared well, investing countless hours organizing student and community support, membership rallies, and even a “bake sale for tuition” at a March 2 university trustees meeting. Members have spent the last six months saving tax refund checks, taking second jobs, paying utility bills ahead, stocking up the freezer, transferring families to spouses’ health insurance plans, and deferring non-essential spending. More than 95 percent of members are supporting the strike.

Inside the hospital, things do not appear to be going quite as management planned. The Emergency Department has been diverting more patients in the last few weeks than it has in the last year.

Every day, physicians and staff not represented by PASNAP relate incidents of labs not drawn or results delivered hours late, agency staff unable to work complex machinery, and problems with computer documentation. Scabs have their own gag clause; they are threatened with discipline up to and including termination for engaging the strikers in any way.

GAG RULE

Temple insists on doubling health care premiums for nurses, tripling them for the technical/professional staff, freezing wages for a year, and reducing wage differentials for undesirable shifts and 24-hour on-call rates. Its final offer would give management the right to change or eliminate health plans at any time and to hike premiums annually.

Most disturbingly, the hospital insists there will be no agreement without its “non-disparagement” clause, which states that members “shall not publicly criticize, ridicule or make any statement which disparages or is derogatory of Temple.” The hospital maintains there is never a need to go public to protect patient safety.

PASNAP, however, supports staffing ratio legislation pending in the legislature and anticipates that members and officers may testify at public hearings to give first-hand accounts of unsafe situations, in order to explain the vital need for such legislation.

Temple considers its staffing levels a management prerogative and therefore a non-mandatory item of bargaining—and has refused to negotiate any staffing language.

Temple is also demanding an end to fair share or agency fee payments, effectively creating an open shop.
A year ago, the hospital unilaterally and illegally eliminated the long-standing dependent tuition benefit and promises to keep it out of any future agreement. The Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board ruled in the union’s favor on this issue, but Temple continues to appeal, now fighting not only its employees but also the Labor Board.

OVERWHELMING SUPPORT

Members have reached out to allies and their response has been swift, powerful, and universal. National Nurses United and the nurses associations of California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Michigan have all sent members with messages of solidarity to the picket lines and lent material support.

Speakers at a huge rally with the presidents of the Philadelphia Police (FOP Lodge 5) and Firefighters’ unions (IAFF Local 22) recalled the police officers and firefighters cared for in our ER and burn unit. They ended with the chant, “Your strike is our strike!”

Many other unions are sending cases of water and snacks, and groups of members to support the picket lines. The Temple University Student Senate voted to support the union and members of the school’s Student Labor Action Project have been a welcome, vocal presence at many PASNAP events, along with high school students, members of the Philadelphia student union.

On April 9, Faith Day, pastors from all denominations and all parts of the city voiced their support from the picket line.

A day before, PASNAP members filled a weekly session of City Council to capacity while the overflow crowd initiated an impromptu picket line out front. The council will consider a resolution calling on Temple to return to good-faith negotiations. Congressman Bob Brady pledged to hold any stimulus money headed to Temple until there is a satisfactory resolution to the strike.

$10,000-A-WEEK SCABS

Patients and their visitors at the hospital are greeted with flyers explaining the issues and giving suggestions on how to help end the strike. Tragically, it is the patients who suffer most. Temple recklessly pledged to maintain all patient services throughout the strike and is employing agency labor at up to $10,000 per week.

A newly published study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that struck hospitals that continue functioning with scabs put patients at increased risk. Mortality increased by 19.4 percent during strikes, and 30-day readmissions by 6.5 percent, according to the paper, which studied nurses’ strikes in New York between 1984 and 2004.

“We are legally obligated to give the hospital appropriate notice of the date and time of the strike,” said Maureen May, president of the Temple RN local. “Theoretically, the hospital is supposed to use that time to transfer patients out of the facility, to reschedule elective procedures, and defer admissions. Temple chose to charge ahead and bears full responsibility for patient safety.”

PASNAP members will stay strong, united, and outside until Temple presents an offer that protects our patients and our rights. Good-faith bargaining is the hospital’s cheapest and most responsible option.


Marty Harrison is a Temple staff nurse and executive board member at the hospital’s PASNAP local.



Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Temple Students ‘Die-In’ To Oppose Exploitation of Workers



It's alright, ma, I'm only die-in.

By Donna Smith  |  April 14, 2010

PHILADELPHIA – “Should I care if someone else is being exploited?” asked Kate Harkins, 21, of Schuylkill County, PA, who is a junior majoring in American Studies at Temple.  “If we don’t stand up for those workers now, then down the road when we are workers, conditions will not be changed, and we will not be heard.”

As the bells on campus tolled just after noon on Wednesday, protesting students walked to Bell Tower Plaza along Polett Walk with T-shirts that read, “My nurse was a scab,” and they staged a die-in to protest worker exploitation.  Students from Temple University’s Student Labor Action Project said they held the protest in support of the striking nurses and health professionals at Temple University Hospital just two subway stops up the Broad Street – Orange Line from the tree lined campus where they study.

The students have also been walking and taking the subway to the picket lines in front of Temple University Hospital where 1,500 nurses and health professionals who are members of Pennsylvania Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP) have been on strike since March 31.

As the student-protesters staged their die-in, another student dressed in green scrubs walked through them waving a handful of cash to signify the huge amounts of money Temple is spending on strike-replacement workers – or scabs – and to show that the temporary workers’ priority is to make money and not necessarily provide the best of patient care.

The students also work with a local Jobs With Justice coalition and said they object to having their University spend public funds trying to break up the nurses’ union rather than bargain fairly. “We are their bread and butter.  We pay our tuition, and they have to listen to us,” Harkins admonished the Temple administration outside Sullivan Hall as the protesters were closely watched by University police.

The students said they intend to continue their support of the striking Temple nurses and health professionals until the University treats them fairly and negotiates in good faith.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/ 


Tuesday, April 13, 2010

PSOU: Special thanks to those who showed support in City Hall yesterday!

Yesterday, April 12, Philadelphia Museum of Art Director Tim Rub and President Gail Harrity entered City Council chambers with confident grins to make their case for funding the Art Museum next year. Rub even pointed to one of our signs and said sarcastically, "Looking good, honey. Just hold it a little higher!" 


But they left speechless and pale. On their way out, Rub's aid had to prompt him to respond to a reporter because he was staring off into thin air.


After Rub made it clear during the hearing that he had not done more than write a letter of support for security guards to City Council, Councilpeople laid into him for twenty minutes, demanding that he take stronger measures to push AlliedBarton to the negotiations table. Over 30 security officers and many community supporters held up signs. We cheered in support of City Council, and jeered Timothy Rub as he failed to answer the tough questions.


Special thanks to those of you who were able to be a part of the event!  We were not only spectators. Union members lobbied, turned out co-workers and helped design questions for City Council to ask. And our show of numbers gave City Council the confidence to seriously question the budget allocation to the Museum while workers rights are being abused. Security guards showed their power and are one step closer to having a voice on the job!
 
One day longer, Union stronger!



This message is from the Philadelphia Security Officers Union's organizers: Daniel Duffy, Eduardo Soriano-Castillo, and Fabricio Rodriguez.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

April 12: Art Museum Guards Union Goes to City Hall

 
click image to enlarge

On Monday, April 5, PSOU staff and guards lobbied City Council demanding that the $2.3 million dollars allocated to the Museum only be awarded to the Museum when workers have a voice.  Within hours museum director Timothy Rub sent a letter to Councilman Greenlee saying that he "urges AlliedBarton to respect the wishes of the majority of security officers and bargain in good faith."

This is the first time that the Museum has come off the neutrality fence in support of guards.  However, a letter alone does not give workers a voice: the Museum has to come out publicly and workers must have a say before we stop fighting for justice!

The Museum hopes that a letter will appease City Council so it can get through the budget process scot-free.  We need to show City Council that, as Philadelphia residents and taxpayers, we want real accountability.  Stand with security guards at City Hall as Councilman Greenlee takes the lead on workers rights and security standards next Monday, April 12.


President of art museum backs security guards' union

Friday, April 9th, 2010
The president of the Philadelphia Museum of Art has indicated his support for a security guard labor union at his institution.

Most of the 130 security guards voted themselves into a union last year. But so far they have not been recognized by their employer, Allied Barton, which contracts with the Museum. When the Museum's new director, Timothy Rub, took office last year, he refused to endorse either side.

But in a letter to City Councilman Bill Greenlee, Rub urged Allied Barton to listen to the security guards' requests.

Union spokesman Fabricio Rodriguez says Rub's support means a lot: “The letter from Director Rub was an enormous development. We're glad Rub has joined the majority at the museum, councilman Greenlee, and the National Labor Relations Board in calling on Allied Barton to recognize union and improving museum security.”

The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Allied Barton must negotiate with the union. The company has appealed.

The guards are fighting for higher pay and better working conditions. They also say they need more emergency training to help safeguard the museum's visitors and masterpieces.

WATCH: First Days of Temple Strike



WE, the Temple workers are standing strong in our efforts to show temple that we are to be respected and valued for what we do everyday. It is a tough battle but still one definitely worth fighting.

Carolyn is a GI technician at Temple Hospital. She participated in a media training class Media Mobilizing Project put on with the United Way last fall. She is a member and leader of the Pennsylvania Association of School Nurses and Practitioners (PASNAP) currently on the picket line.

LISTEN: Temple nurses rally on first day of strike

by Milena Velis  | Apr 1, 2010
 
The nurses and technical professionals that work at Temple Hospital started their strike March 31 with a rally that brought out 1,200 people to show their support. Listen to a report from Labor Justice Radio on the first day of the strike.







http://templewatch.org/

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Philadelphia Hospital Workers Walk Out

By Marty Harrison   |  updated April 1, 2010

Health care workers at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia went on strike Wednesday, holding out against demands to give up free-speech rights, explode health care costs, and hobble the union's power. Photo: phillylabor.org.

With administrators trying to muzzle members and pledging to spend freely on scabs, health care workers at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia began a strike Wednesday.

The hospital’s 1,000 nurses and 500 professional workers, members of PASNAP (Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals), have been working without a contract for six months. Members reaffirmed their commitment to the strike in a 980 to 50 vote Monday.

The hospital workers see straight through Temple’s crocodile tears of financial hardship. The hospital has pledged to maintain all patient services during the strike and will employ agency labor at $10,000 a week, a rate more than six times higher than unionized staff. The outsized pay for scabs was reported by Temple nurses approached by contractors last week.

Serious issues divide the two sides. Most disturbingly, the hospital insists there will be no agreement without its “non-disparagement” clause, which states that members, staff, and officers “shall not publicly criticize, ridicule or make any statement which disparages or is derogatory of Temple.” While paying lip service to our professional role as patient advocates, the hospital maintains there is never a need to go public to protect patient safety.

PASNAP, however, supports staffing ratio legislation currently pending in the Pennsylvania legislature and anticipates that members and officers may testify at public hearings to give first-hand accounts of unsafe situations, in order to explain the vital need for such legislation. Like most unionized health care institutions, Temple considers its staffing levels a management prerogative and therefore a non-mandatory item of bargaining—and has refused to negotiate any staffing language.

A FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL

Temple’s last offer would double health care premiums for nurses, triple them for the technical/professional staff, freeze wages for the first year of the contract, and reduce hard-won wage differentials for undesirable shifts and 24-hour on-call rates.

The hospital unilaterally and illegally eliminated the long-standing dependent tuition benefit last year and intends to keep it out of any future agreement. The Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board ruled in the union’s favor on this issue in January, but Temple has appealed, now fighting not only its employees but also the Labor Board. Clearly, the hospital administration prefers to spend Pennsylvanians’ tax dollars on lawyers rather than on caregivers at the bedside.

The hospital also is attempting to constrain union power. Temple is demanding an end to fair share or agency fee payments, effectively destroying the closed shop. Management offered the nurses a three-year agreement and the technical/professional staff a four-year agreement, to strip the common expiration date from the two locals.

Further, its final offer gives hospital administration the right to change or eliminate health plans at any time and to hike premiums annually. This language takes health coverage outside the bounds of contract negotiations and into the realm of management policy, over which it has sole discretion.

The administration has repeatedly cited the economic downturn to rationalize the concessions it’s demanding. Though the Health System ended the fiscal year with a small deficit, largely due to costs associated with closing its Northeastern hospital, the flagship Temple University Hospital came out $16.5 million ahead. Of the $178 million allotted to the university by the state last year, the hospital’s share totaled about $30 million.

Back in September, the membership rejected Temple’s final offer by a vote of 1051 to 7. Individual members have spent the last six months preparing financially for a strike—saving tax refund checks, taking second jobs, paying utility bills ahead, stocking up the freezer, transferring families to spouses’ health insurance plans, and deferring non-essential spending.

GETTING UNDER THEIR SKIN

Collectively, the union has been busy as well. PASNAP has unfair labor practice charges pending against the hospital for unilateral changes made to the professional/technical staff regarding vacations and holidays, surveillance of the membership, threatening discipline for wearing union stickers, and preventing members wearing union T-shirts and buttons from entering the building. Members and union staff have invested countless hours organizing student and community support, membership rallies, and even a “bake sale for tuition” at a March 2 university trustees meeting.

The Temple University student government Senate voted to support the union and members of the school’s Student Labor Action Project have been a welcome, vocal presence at many PASNAP events, irritating the administration enough to have campus police rip up the students’ signs as they attempted to deliver petitions to university leaders in early March.

PASNAP is not going quietly into this strike. A noontime rally drew 1,200 the first day of the strike, and further demonstrations are expected at the city council, at Temple University, and at the home of the university’s president, Ann Weaver Hart. Those actions build on a string of loud, public protests, including a big March 19 rally in front of the hospital, where AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka declared “we will not allow Temple Hospital, an institution supported by taxpayer funds, to thumb their noses at these workers or the union movement.”


Marty Harrison is a Temple staff nurse and executive board member at the hospital's PASNAP local. 







LaborNotes.org


Labor Education and Research Project © 2005-2010

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Temple Tells Nurses: The Constitution Doesn't Apply to You

Share this on Twitter - Temple Tells Nurses: The Constitution Doesn't Apply to You

Wed Mar 31, 2010

"If you want your constitutional rights, you need to go somewhere else."
-Robert Birnbrauer, Human Resources, Temple University Hospital

A strike by 1500 nurses, health care professional and technical employees at Temple University Hospital represented by the Pennsylvania of Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals began this morning at 7:00am with a picket line that eventually grew to over 1200 for a noon-time rally. Here is one local television clip from the rally:

At the height of the rally, all 1,200 put their hands across their mouths to protest the hospital’s proposed hospital gag order.  Under the hospital’s last offer, individual Temple nurses and healthcare professionals could be disciplined or fired if the hospital believes they made a publicly disparaging comment about the hospital—what has become known as the "gag clause"—in other words any reporting of unsafe care or advocacy of patients.

The fallout of the gag rule was explained by PASNAP President, Patty Eakin, (an emergency department RN who has worked at Temple for two decades), in an interview in the Philadelphia City Paper last November.

temple-rally_5004

What if Eakin wants to testify in Harrisburg about the dangers of low nurse-to-patient ratios, as planned? "How can I talk about that if I can't in some way reference my own workplace? They want to stifle our ability to advocate for things like that," she explained. "Clearly, we've been documenting inadequate staffing at Temple — and [administrators are] claiming, 'We need to keep things internal, and away from the public.' They want to have it both ways. 'Stay within the hospital walls and we'll fix things.' But they don't."

temple-rally_4943

Safe Patient Care at Stake
Temple and conservative media want the  public to think this strike is about money. An article on the pending strike in yesterday’s Temple News,, a student newspaper, garnered tons of comments mostly from Temple nurses expressing their primary motive--patient care.

A few examples:
"We are going on strike to protect the patients. Presently temple has inadequate supplies and staffing to provide the best care for there patients. But they pay their CEO’s millions. If my parent was in temple I would transfer them out to another hospital."

"We work in the poorest section of the city, with the highest morbidity and mortality in Philadelphia. This community deserves people who will stand up for them and the care they deserve, because often they are not taken into account when politicians, and hospital administrators make decisions about healthcare. WE ARE THE VOICE FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NONE!! Most of our temple nurses have been at the hospital for an AVERAGE of 10-15 years and have at least 20-30 years of nursing experience within the community. We work for an organization that continuously charges the poorest, non-insured people the highest for health care."

"The nurse union is fighting for safe staffing for the patients, consistent working hours, adequate supplies and equipment, and the ability to STAND UP when we see something wrong WITHOUT threat of losing my job. It’s not about money" 

Temple is not afraid to spend tons of money to break the nurses

temple-rally_4881

Temple banked a $23 million net profit in fiscal year 2008, so they have lots to spend. They are robo- calling nurses throughout the country and offering them $10,000 a week to work as replacements for union nurses. The scab agency they have hired at great expense has placed 850 scabs, which is 850 more than should exist.
UPDATE: The Philadelphia Inquirer tonight also confirmed that figure, noting "the hospital's willingness to spend heavily on strike workers - advertising, through an agency, temporary positions paying as much as $10,388 a week."
The website of the primary strike breaking firm, Health Source Global. proudly proclaims the joys of strike breaking:
"Travel with HealthSource Global Staffing and have the time of your life! We offer roundtrip airfare or mileage reimbursement and provide private housing to all of our customers."
This is one of the largest strikes by nurses in history.  RNs  across the country send this support to the brave nurses, and we ask our allies to stand in solidarity as well.  You can:
  1. Send Temple a message: http://templewatch.org
  1. Call Temple President Ann Weaver Hart and tell her nurses CANNOT be silenced: 215-204-7405
  1. Donate to Support the Temple Nurses, or follow them on Facebook/Twitter: http://templewatch.org/



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