Nurses To Strike San Leandro Hospital May 1?

Will nurses strike San Leandro Hospital and seven other Sutter Health facilities around the Bay Area Tuesday?

Possibly.

The California Nurses Association said last week that it would hold a one-day strike Tuesday. It offered to call off the action Friday if Sutter Health changed its stance in year-old talks between the two parties.

The last negotiating session occurred April 26th, a Sutter spokeswoman said.

CNA says Sutter wants givebacks from nurses despite posting over $4 billion in profits since 2007, and paying 20 top executives salaries over $1 million. The union has also led the fight to keep San Leandro Hospital open.

Sutter says its nurses, like those at Eden Hospital, earn one-third more than the average Bay Area nurse and have gotten 20 percent pay increases in the last three years, versus a four percent pay hike for the average Bay Area worker.

The future of San Leandro Hospital is bound up with all of this.

Sutter Health recently won a legal battle to secure ownership of San Leandro Hospital. So far it has not disclosed what it intends to do with the facility.

Last week a San Leandro City Council subcommittee heard county officials of what planners expect to happen -- that Sutter will close the hospital's emergency room and turn the location into some other form of health facility.

Still up in the air is whether the county will become part of an effort to revive the hospital with an emergency room, or at least maintain an urgent care center and other features, such as rehabilitation services.

Any such options would require Sutter's agreement. As of last week, the health care chain hadn't spoken with the county.

The uncertainty will apparently continue for several days.

"I can assure you that Sutter Health has no plans to make any announcement regarding closure next week," spokeswoman Stacey Wells said Friday.

CNA has called a rally for 4:00 pm Tuesday at the San Leandro Senior Community Center to mobilize opponents of a hospital closure.

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