PROVIDENCE – The United Nurses and Allied Professionals held an informational picket at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital on Nov. 3 to demand a better contract for Prospect CharterCARE LLC’s workers in multiple locations.
The union, representing nurses and health care workers at Fatima Hospital, Roger Williams Medical Center, and Prospect Home Health and Hospice, said it held the picket to draw attention to Prospect CharterCARE’s refusal to negotiate a fair contract for service workers at Fatima, nurses at Roger Williams and employees at Prospect Home Health and Hospice. The failed negotiations come after months of bargaining with UNAP, which is demanding a contract that provides “sufficient wages, benefits and working conditions.”
“Our unions have come together to bargain this contract because we are all tired of Prospect putting profits before patients and health care workers,” said Lynn Redding, a registered nurse at Roger Williams Medical Center and local union president. “Their greed knows no bounds, and we will no longer sit by and watch them pay huge dividends to shareholders while siphoning money out of Rhode Island’s community hospitals. Enough is enough. The nurses and health care workers we represent worked tirelessly and selflessly through the COVID pandemic, sacrificing our mental and physical well-being to ensure quality care for patients. We are now simply looking for a fair contract that includes better working conditions and measures to ensure patient safety and quality care.”
Workers at the three facilities recently voted to give UNAP authorization to issue a 10-day strike if Prospect refuses to reach an agreement.
“We are now seeing news reports that Prospect is looking to sell these community hospitals to another for-profit company, and they’re trying to leave Rhode Island just as they came in – refusing to negotiate contracts that are fair to workers and patients,” said Cindy Fenchel, president of the local union that represents service workers at Fatima Hospital. “We are putting them on notice that we will not let them use our community hospitals as piggy banks to line their pockets and then skip town – saddling these hospitals with debt, leaving workers without a fair contract, and patients without steady, quality care. Rhode Islanders deserve and demand better.”
“The working conditions we face are not sustainable for us or patients,” said Lorrie Miller, an occupational therapist at Prospect Home Health and Hospice. “Our health care workers are traveling around the state seeing as many patients as we can, but Prospect has cut positions significantly over the last year or so and we are spread far too thin. Our patients are the ones who are suffering and, in some cases, waiting far too long for care. Prospect needs to do the right thing and agree to a contract that rectifies this situation. The patients we care for depend on it.”
Claudia Chiappa is a PBN staff writer. You may contact her at Chiappa@PBN.com.
