Nurses at Greenfield hospital plan second strike in past year

Baystate Franklin Medical Center’s nurses also took to the picket line in June 2017.Dave Roback/The Republican/File

For the second time in less than a year, nurses at Baystate Health’s community hospital in Greenfield are preparing to go on strike amid a stalemate in contract negotiations.

About 200 members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association are planning a 24-hour walkout on Wednesday. Hospital officials plan to lock out the striking nurses for two additional days. They plan to use replacement workers starting 7 p.m. Tuesday.

This is the latest of several recent nurses strikes in Massachusetts, including at Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield last October, and at Tufts Medical Center in Boston last July.

At Baystate Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield, nurses went on strike last June. If they can’t reach a last-minute deal to avoid the strike this week, it will be the first time the union organizes two walkouts at the same Massachusetts hospital over the same contract, union officials said.

Nurses rejected the last contract offer from Baystate Franklin, which is part of Springfield-based Baystate Health, the largest health care provider in Western Massachusetts.

Union spokesman Joe Markman said nurses and hospital officials are close to an agreement on wages and health benefits, but they still disagree on staffing levels.

“In order to call off the strike, they would need to offer a fair agreement,” Markman said.

Hospital officials said they already have offered a strong contract.

“The next step from our perspective would be for union leadership to put our contract proposal before their member nurses for a vote,” spokeswoman Shelly Hazlett said in an e-mail.

Baystate has hired about 70 temporary nurses to work during the strike and lockout, Hazlett added. The strike is expected to cost the hospital about $1 million, about the same as the cost of the strike last June.

Some areas of the hospital, including the intensive-care unit, will be closed during the strike. ICU patients will be transferred to Baystate Medical Center in Springfield.

“While we are dismayed to focus our time and health care resources on this unnecessary action, we have been given no choice by the leaders of the Massachusetts Nurses Association who called this strike,” Ronald Bryant, interim president of Baystate Franklin, said in a statement.

Union officials plan to stage rallies and pickets throughout the strike and lockout.

Nurse staffing levels have been a point of contention in several contract disputes. The nurses union is also pushing a ballot initiative that would mandate nurse-to-patient ratios at Massachusetts hospitals.