In a draconian maneuver relating to nurse paid sick time, M Health Fairview, one of the largest hospital systems in Minnesota, announced that sick employees, “…will be allowed to borrow up to 80 hours of PTO (Paid Time Off) from future accruals”. The email, sent out on Saturday, March 14, creates a policy for nurses exceeding their sick so that they can opt to go into a sick pay debt. Future sick pay, earned by nurses and dependent on their hour of work would be taken back from them.
Front- line health care workers are paid a fraction of the seven figure salaries of hospital CEOs and other ancillary upper management. (There has been no announcements of payouts to management at this time.) Nurses share almost no significant decision making power in health care and at same time are shouldering the enormous burden of care giving during the pandemic COVID 19. All are risking infection, and some, due to age and medical conditions are risking death.
As the pandemic unfolds, RNs have been comprehensively prohibited from the critical decision -making discussions related to staffing, personal protective equipment, and policy. Systemically, the demands and desperate requirements of nurses have been ignored as the COVID 19 virus spreads across the continent. They are being directed to work under worsening and more dangerous condition with inadequate personal protective equipment.
We Do The Work spoke with the “Communications team” member Maria, who would not give her last name, on the night of Saturday, March 14. Maria stated that she, “…is not permitted to divulge” M Health Fairview decisions and stated, “I want to make sure we are off the record”. WDTW neither offered nor agreed to this request. Following is the email.
Imagine the real suggestion on this policy and the distance between its promoter and the realities of nurses across the M Fairview Health system. Knowing that medical workers walking into every aspect of health care today are risking their own safety and carrying the potential to bring viral contamination home to their families, are doing so willingly and at a time of critical public need, are being forced into sick time debt should they be harmed or contaminated in the process.
These are the people that take care of our families and M Health Fairview, returning to their bottom line, is instituting a new debt policy for the most important workforce in the nation today.
We Do The Work thanks the incalculable efforts of nurses, doctors, EMT’s MAs, LPNs, housekeepers, maintenance workers, and all other people running the care centers that are doing their best to save lives today.
Please keep your stories and information coming.
For more information or to give a personal statement please call M Health Fairview and ask for CEO James Hereford. After ongoing attempts to contact Hereford, we have not been successful.
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