http://www.bangornews.com/news/t/city.aspx?articleid=154870&zoneid=176
By Meg Haskell
Monday, October 1, 2007 - Bangor Daily News
BANGOR, Maine — The nursing union at Eastern Maine Medical Center rejected the hospital negotiating team’s final contract offer Sunday afternoon and announced its intention to call a one-day strike. The official strike notice is expected this morning, both sides said Sunday night. By law, the union must give the hospital 10 days to prepare for the walk-out.
The nurses’ three-year contract with EMMC was due to expire at midnight on Sunday.
"They’ve always had the power to stop this at any time," said staff nurse Judy Brown, president of Unit 1 of the Maine State Nurses Association. While negotiations, which have been under way since July, had found common ground on a number of other measures, Brown said the union’s top contract priority has always been the creation of a professional practice committee made up of all direct-care staff nurses and without any nursing managers. The committee would be empowered to set nurse-to-patient staffing levels and influence other matters such as the use of technology in delivering patient care or the need for additional support staff such as unit secretaries.
"We’re asking for a committee to have more voice and control over our profession," Brown said.
The hospital could not accept the committee as envisioned by the union, said Jill McDonald, vice president for communications at EMMC. Hospital negotiators agreed to most of the union’s proposals, McDonald said, including waiving an increase in the amount nurses pay to purchase health insurance for their families and agreeing not to attempt to remove some nurses with supervisory duties from the ranks of the bargaining unit.
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