Wednesday’s “thousand-member picket” targeted Swedish First Hill (Image: TheDignityVirus.com)
Calls for more nurses and the improved benefits to attract them echoed through Broadway Wednesday afternoon as hundreds of hospital workers, union organizers, and a handful of elected officials staged a picket outside Swedish Hospital’s First Hill campus.
The picket came one day after another round of negotiations ended without a contract deal between SEIU Healthcare 1199NW and Swedish, one of the largest Central Area employers and owned allied with Providence Health Services.
Staffing levels at the hospital are among the major sticking points in negotiations. Swedish-Providence is seeking to hire some 1,600 nurses, positions the hospital says it’s been unable to fill with qualified workers due to a nationwide nursing shortage.
SEIU members say the hospital is unwilling to offer a wage and benefit package that would attract those nurses despite the fact the hospital banked $110 million last year. In the meantime, hospital workers say low staffing levels are hurting patients and creating untenable working conditions.
Speaking before the crowd, Mayor Ed Murray said he was concerned about the strained relationship between Swedish and its workers and called on the hospital to quickly resolve the dispute. June Altaras, Swedish’s chief executive of acute care, told CHS she hoped a new round of negotiations would start sometime this month. Council members Mike O’Brien, Bruce Harrell, Kshama Sawant, and Jean Godden were also in attendance to support picketing workers.
SEIU Healthcare 1199NW has been in contract negotiations with Swedish-Providence since April. Swedish is the largest nonprofit healthcare provider in the Seattle area. In 2012, it completed its merger with Providence joining together “five Swedish hospital campuses and 27 Providence hospitals across five Western states.”
Meanwhile, Swedish-Providence is moving ahead with plans to expand and improve its aging First Hill facilities, while plans to expand the Cherry Hill campus east of Seattle University remain in turmoil.
The hospital recently filed paperwork with the city to start making improvements to the clinical decision unit inside the hospital’s main building at 747 Broadway. The work stems from a Major Institution Master Plan adopted in 2005 which calls for a new 17-story tower and new pedestrian sky bridges over Minor and Cherry. Plans also call for adding around 1,500 more parking spaces and a total of nearly 1.2 million square feet of new building space throughout the campus.
A spokesperson for Swedish-Providence said she couldn’t share any details about the next phase of work or the timeline of the project as the hospital was still “early in the exploration to determine what will be built.”
Over at the Cherry Hill campus, neighbors are continuing their long struggle with Swedish and the developer Sabey Corporation to address concerns about the size and scope of its planned expansion into the largely residential neighborhood.
Community members recently filed an appeal with the city Hearing Examiner on the city’s environmental impact study of the project. The group claims the Department of Planning and Development failed to fully assess the impact of the hospital’s expansion on the surrounding area. It’s also hoping to the appeal will force Swedish to heed neighborhood concerns.
“We want to make sure that whatever expansion happens is smart and is not detrimental,” said Troy Meyers, one of the appellants in the case.
