“Replacement workers” at Temple speak out

Finishing up a plate of coconut shrimp in the bar at the Sheraton Center City Wednesday evening, the intensive-care nurse from Texas looked beat after her eighth straight 12-hour day at Temple Hospital.

Temple calls this nurse and others like her replacement workers. The 1,500 nurses, therapists, social workers, and technicians who have been out on strike since March 31 see her in a far harsher light.

Their signs say it all:

"Wounds Won't Heal 'Til The Scabs Go Away," said a bandage-festooned placard carried at a rally at City Hall on Thursday.

"How do they sleep at night?" asked Cheynne Rothermel, the striking emergency room nurse who wore the sign Thursday.

Scab or replacement worker, the intensive-care nurse from Texas is committed to stay until mid-April. This is her fifth strike.

"I know the striking nurses don't feel this way, but we're just trying to get the best salary for one hour worked," said the nurse, a woman in her late 50s or early 60s who does not want to attract unwelcome attention by having her name in the paper. "Maybe they can go work a strike themselves. There's plenty of strikes to go around," she said.

In an ironic twist, the staffing agencies supplying the workers for Temple are bunking them - two to a room - at the Sheraton, the same hotel that gets lots of labor business because its bartenders and waitstaff are union members, Local 274.

"We don't care who they are as long as they drink," said one of the waitresses.

And they were drinking - the intensive-care nurse from Texas had a white Russian, the unemployed X-ray technician from Tampa, Fla., worked on a Blue Moon beer and tried to bum a cigarette. Hospitals in Florida are laying off and she had not had a full-time job for six months.

"I have to earn money, and if they don't appreciate what they've got, it's their problem," she said.

It was kickback time after yet another 7 a.m.-to-7 p.m. shift, and the lobby bar soon filled up with nurses and technicians in scrubs and hospital jackets arriving on chartered buses from the hospital.

All ages. All races.

Finishing up their drinks in the hotel lounge were two friends, one from Texas, the other from Alabama. "Yes, there's a strike circuit," said one of them. "This gives us a chance to network."

They met in prison in California, where they served as jailhouse nurses while the regular crew was on strike.

Outside, more lounged about, chatting and smoking on a balmy spring evening, cherry trees in bloom. In the lobby, a poster promised two van trips daily to Wal-Mart - at 10 a.m. and 8:30 p.m.

They might need to buy more scrubs. Lots of people's scrubs got lost in the laundry service.

The nurse from Texas sounds like a harsh person.

She's not. She has a 37-year-old handicapped son back home. Usually when she travels, she pays someone $15 an hour to care for him. But his brother got laid off, so he is available to fill in.

"If I were working for that hospital, I might be on strike, too," she said. She understands how nurses who worked for years expecting free tuition for their children might be upset with a cut in that benefit, even though such a benefit is unheard of among nurses, she claimed.

"They are being asked to give up part of their salary," as she dipped another shrimp into the tangy sauce. "You think about that. That cut is huge."

She credits unions for pushing safe nurse-patient ratios. "That has made a big difference in the quality of care."

At the bar, the nurses laid out the various ways their business works. Agency work is routine, even for staffers who moonlight on the side. A temporary staffing agency will call to fill random shifts, maybe to cover a Saturday night shortage.

The next step is travel nursing. It pays more, shifts are guaranteed and expenses are covered. The third step is strike nursing. The intensive-care nurse from Texas said it paid about 20 percent more than travel nursing.

Allied professionals also earn more working strikes. Sue Herbstritt, a licensed practical nurse from Erie, who is working as a medical assistant at the hospital, nursed a cigarette outside the hotel.

She said she was making 75 percent more than she would as an agency staffer in Erie, where, she said, full-time hospital jobs are practically nonexistent. "The economy is very poor," she said.

But the real strike opportunity is overtime pay.

Many health professionals normally work three 12-hour shifts a week. Overtime kicks in four hours into the fourth 12-hour day. In a six-day week of 12-hour days, that can amount to some real money. On one company Web site, an agency promises up to $10,000 a week for some nurses.

The replacement workers got hooked into the system by posting resumés on Web sites such as Monster or CareerBuilder. Response was fast; most were told to be on a plane the next day.

A radiology technician took two extra days off from her regular job in Seattle and flew in for a week's worth of work. "I'd always wanted to come to Philadelphia," she said. On her day off, she visited the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.

A radiology technician from Florida lost her job Dec. 31 and has not been able to find another.

She does not feel any sympathy for the hospital's striking workers. The way she sees it, they have good pay, good benefits, and they shouldn't expect to have the hospital pay for their children's education.

"Who cares? I had to pay for my kids," she said. "There's no place for a union when it comes to dealing with patients."

What galls all of them is the union suggestion that they are not qualified or competent. Laura Blackburn, for example, said she had resigned from her position of director of nursing at a small psychiatric hospital in Ohio.

"Generally, all hospitals have the same setup. Patients are patients are patients. They all have the same wants and needs," said Blackburn, as she dug into a plate of wings after a day handling case management at Temple.

"We've all bonded so closely," she said. "We sleep together, we go to work together. It's a very close-knit group. Everybody helps everybody. There's very little chaos."

Though the days are long, the stress is minimal, several said. Whatever troubles Temple has, whatever inefficiencies there might be in the normal course of care, whatever politics or personalities gall over years, none of that matters to the workers relaxing in the lobby after a long day.

They simply take care of patients.

"Here's the big difference," said the intensive-care nurse from Texas. "If it's bad, we can walk away. Our families aren't tied up in the place."

Bottom line?

"If I didn't come," she said, "someone else would. Everybody has to make a living.

"All you do is get up, go to work, come back, get up and repeat the day again."