Elation, anxiety felt by St. Vincent Hospital nurses as 285-day strike tentatively ends

WORCESTER — If you hear cars honking on the streets surrounding St. Vincent Hospital this weekend, don't be alarmed.

The chorus of horns that echoed Saturday were in solidarity with the nurses on the picket line, the day after a tentative agreement was reached Friday between the hospital and the Massachusetts Nurses Association.

The resolution comes after 700 nurses have been striking for a historic 285 days, ushering an end to two years of negotiations, with more than 43 negotiating sessions.

Friday's agreement was reached after two weeks of discussions with federal mediators, and finally settled during an in-person session at a Dorchester union hall led by U.S. Secretary of Labor and former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, according to an MNA press release.

Details of the agreement have yet to be released by the union. Nurses will remain on the picket line until the agreement is ratified, which is expected to take a few weeks.

"I fully expect that there will be an overwhelming 'yes' vote. We've made improvements in many areas — staffing, safety, health insurance and finally getting everybody returned to their job," Marie Ritacco, registered nurse and vice president of the MNA, said Saturday. "It's a tremendous victory for the nurses of St. Vincent Hospital, for the patients that we serve, for our community in Central Massachusetts, and for organized labor."

Ritacco said they don't know exactly how many striking nurses will choose to return to the hospital but believes that when they look at the contract the union has achieved, it would be difficult to walk away.

About 200 nurses gathered at the local Teamsters Union office to be informed of the agreement details, get questions answered and to celebrate together.

"They're absolutely elated. I mean, you're not going to be thrilled with every single facet of a compromise because that's what it is but it's good for nurses. It's good for patients," Ritacco said.

Relief mixed with surprise, uncertainty

At the hospital, the atmosphere is a mixture of relief and uncertainty.

"We have plans to reorient the nurses who have been out back to the hospital. We are going to be focused on culture and a healing process and making sure that everybody's working collaboratively and that the wounds of the past are put beside us and that we work together in the best interest of patient care," Carolyn Jackson, CEO of St. Vincent Hospital, said in an interview Saturday.

Both Jackson and union representatives credited Walsh's involvement in coming to an agreement, which Jackson said felt like it would never end.

"I think there were a lot of people, myself included, who were surprised that things reached a tentative agreement yesterday. I was optimistic but I've been optimistic in the past. So I think the stars aligned and we were able to finally find a common ground," Jackson said.

When the strike started in March, Tenet Healthcare, owners of the hospital, were spending more than $30,000 a day for police presence over the strike. Jackson declined to comment on the total financial cost incurred by the hospital for strike-related expenses in the last nine months.

When the moment of truth came Friday evening, Kathy Duszak, a registered nurse, was Christmas shopping at Natick Mall. As soon as she joined the Zoom call through which the announcement was made, she heard cheering and yelling.

"They were saying we were going back to work. And I started crying my eyes out, sitting on a couch in the middle of Natick Mall. People looked at me like I was crazy, but I was so happy," Duszak, of Worcester, said.

Tears of joy

There was a lot of crying on that Zoom call, and some champagne too. But even as nurses celebrate, there's anxiety about going back in after being on the picket line, away from the job for nine months.

"To have to go back and get reoriented with the floor, the work, with new people that you don't know — lot of anxiety. But, you know, people are just happy to be going back to their jobs and we have to figure out a cohesiveness between the nurses that were on strike and the nurses that are inside," registered nurse Christine Setterlund said.

Ritacco said they'd been discussing these issues for a while and expects all nurses, striking or otherwise, to be professional and put patients first.

"The time for the discord is done. We have done something here that we set out to do and now have no reason to walk in and be vindictive," she said. "Now we want to start the healing process. We're not going to be best friends with the nurses that crossed our picket line, but we're going to work together for the health and welfare of the patients."

When nurses walked out in March, they'd already witnessed great tragedy, which spurred their decision to strike.

"We witnessed some of the most tragic loss for families, worse than we had ever seen in our whole careers. Nurses were the only ones in the rooms with patients, to hold someone's hand and be their connection to their family," Ritacco said. "A few words for the last time because even their family couldn't come. Nurses are changed forever. And we realized that if we weren't going to stand up and speak out for our patients and ourselves, nobody would."

Stressful times

Now to go back, with the rise in COVID-19 cases and fears about the omicron variant, makes this homecoming even more stressful. And the last nine months have not been easy for the nurses. Hopes were squashed when other agreements fell through at the last moment took an emotional toll, and after so many months, many striking nurses had to get other jobs.

"The other thing was knowing what was happening in there. One of our PCAs (personal care assistants) called me on my cellphone and said, 'Linda, I have a patient that wants to talk to you,' " Linda Bellows of Charlton said. "The patient had had a knee replacement before the strike. And she was in there again, and said, 'It's so different, they don't take care of us the way you girls took care of us.' And there's an element of guilt with that."

But the nine months on the picket line together have brought many of the nurses closer together, knitting a closer community.

"People in other departments who might not have known each other now support, encourage each other. Obviously, there's a lot of ups and downs when you go through a strike - happiness, depression, fear — but we all just kind of work together," Setterlund said.

This "huge victory" for the nurses comes on the heels of many other workers' strikes nationwide, including health care workers. To others out on the picket line, Ritacco expressed solidarity.

"It's a very difficult decision to walk off the job, but our only power is our solidarity. It's a monumental task to take on a multibillion-dollar corporation but we knew we did it for the right reasons, and I would say, 'Don't shrink away from that'," Ritacco said. "The United States of America is where everyone should be valued. We're not mice on wheels, we're people.

"We have families and yes, we will give and give more than we ever thought we could give but we have to know that we're valued, that we have what we need, we have proper rest and that we are valued."

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: St. Vincent Hospital nurses express elation, anxiety over strike's end.