Santa Claus Delivers His Remarks About MMC’s Termination of Paid Leave Benefits This Morning in Front of Maine Medical Center, Portland.
Santa Claus Leads a Group of Nurses to Deliver a Badket Full of Coal to Jeff Sanders This Morning.
A Basket Full of Lumps of Coal With Jeff Sanders Name Was Delivered to Him Immediaely Following the one-half Hour Press Conference This Morning, Portland.
A group of Maine Medical Nurses, led by Santa Claus interrupting his holiday preparations in the North Pole, delivered a basket of lumps of coal this morning to MMC’s President Jeff Sanders. The coal delivery followed a brief press conference at which several nurses outlined the recent illegal loss of paid benefits to unionized nurses.
The press conference was held in front of MMC this morning, Portland.
Late last week President Saunders announced that MMC had terminated nurses’ paid leave for bereavement, jury duty and military service. No other employees at MMC have lost these benefits so far. Furthermore, several MMC nurses report that managers told them these benefits are ending because they joined the union. This is an illegal move and is in direct violition of the contract that exists between MMC and the nurses’ union.
Katrine Fesmire, RN, said: “The administration’s public justification for this theft of benefits from the nurses is that paid bereavement, military and jury duty leave are not specifically mentioned in the nurses’ new union contract. Clearly Maine Med does not understand “Labor Law 101,” which says that any past practice not specifically changed through bargaining must remain in place. In other words, because we did not bargain any changes to these paid benefits, they cannot be unilaterally changed by management.”
Fesmire continued: “WE ARE BEING SCROOGED BY MAINE MEDICAL CENTER. …………there is always an opportunity for redemption for bad employers. And we are going to give Maine Med that opportunity right now. Our employer can show its humanity and Christmas Spirit by immediately mending its scroogy ways and making things right with us nurses.”
Fesmire urged Sanders to reinstate paid leave for bereavement, mililtary serice and jury duty, compensate all nurses who have already lost pay because of this “illegal end to our paid benefits,” and MMC must apologize to the unionized nurses for its retaliation against them for unionizing. MMC is a 700 bed teaching hospital that recently purchased the Union Station Plaza for $16.8 million.
RN Emma Cooper said: “Shame on Maine Medical Center for this retalition against nurses and shame on this healthcare system that punishes its workers instead of rewarding them……..if this had happened before we had our union, there would have been nothing we could have done about it. But now, we have agency and we have collective power. I am so glad and so proud to be part of my union at Maine Medical Center. We will keep standing together for ourselves and thus our patients. We will keep fighting. And WE WILL WIN! A roar of approval erupted from the gathered crowd.
A representative of NationalNursesUnited said following the press conference that she expects MMC to reverse its illegal termination. If it doesn’t, a complaint will be filed with the National Labor Relations Board. Stay tuned.