Nurses started picketing Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego on Monday, kicking off a two-day strike over wages that required the medical provider to bring in about 400 replacement workers to care for pediatric patients who filled about 60 percent of the facility’s 364 acute care beds.
Katie Langenstrass, executive director of the hospital’s nursing union, said that research has shown that Rady nurses are underpaid by 21 percent to 28 percent when compared to peers at other medical providers.
“The last three to four years things have just finally boiled over,” Lagenstrass said. “You know, we were just in COVID, there was a bad respiratory season that we were very short-staffed through, inflation and cost of living and just kind of everything hitting at once, and that led to these negotiations.
“When we didn’t see a contract that made us competitive or an offer from the hospital that would make us competitive, everything just kind of came to a boiling point.”
According to United Nurses of Children’s Hospital Local 1699, the union that represents Rady’s 1,600 nurses, 80 percent of the represented workforce rejected the hospital’s final offer, which would have delivered pay increases that, taken together with adjustments to specialty pay, would have delivered an average effective compensation increase of 25 percent over three years.
Dr. Patrick Frias, Rady’s chief executive officer, said Monday morning that hospital administration does not begrudge workers their right to strike. He said the replacement workers brought in a few days early to make themselves familiar with the hospital’s operations will be able to get young patients through 48 hours of protests without harm.
“These are experts coming from some of the top children’s hospitals across the country, and they know how to care for kids,” Frias said, adding that the hospital was also able to temporarily bring back travel nurses it worked with during the pandemic.
All hospital leaders, he said, have been on hand to help temporary workers familiarize themselves with Rady’s procedures, and all were required to have prior experience with Epic, the electronic medical records system that most of the health care industry uses to track patient progress.
“While we would always prefer to have our Rady Children’s nurses here, I am very confident that we have a spectacular group of nurses that are working alongside our fantastic team of care providers,” Frias said. “That care team includes the doctors and respiratory therapists and social workers and pharmacists.
“It takes the entire village.”
As midday arrived, the picket line was generating a consistent cacophony at street level, with many behind the wheels of passing vehicles honking their horns in support.
That’s nothing new for pickets. Horn honking is as common as signs on sticks or yelling group slogans.
But hospital administrators noted that some of Rady’s clientele, especially those on the autism spectrum, are particularly sensitive to loud noises and demonstrations.
Dr. Gail Knight, Rady’s chief medical officer, said that the hospital requested a little extra empathy from protesters given the sensitivity of the hospital’s clientele.
“We know they have a right to picket, but we’re asking them to be cognizant of the care that needs to be rendered to these kids and their families,” Knight said.
Langenstrass said that the union would address any noise concerns brought up by the hospital, but added that as of noon, no such concerns had been broached.
Staff writer Noah Lyons contributed to this report.
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