ACTION ALERT! Stand with Kapiʻolani Nurses!
ACTION ALERT! Stand with Kapiʻolani Nurses!
This morning, two of HAPA’s board members, Kim Coco Iwamoto and Ikaika Hussey along with eight other demonstrators were arrested as they called for an immediate end to the lockout of about 600 Kapi‘olani Medical Center for Women & Children union nurses. Officers arrested them for allegedly blocking a bus filled with replacement travel nurses from entering the hospital.
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM, Star Advertiser
Demonstrators are seen outside Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women and Children, today, as they protested the lockout of about 600 unionized nurses by hospital management.
Today marks the 10th day Hawaiʻi Pacific Health, the owners of Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women and Children, have locked out the 600 nurses from work indefinitely following their one-day Unfair Labor Practice strike on September 13th, 2024.
Nurses at Kapiʻolani have been fighting for safe staffing throughout the past year in
negotiations, including in their historic, week-long strike in January. Unsafe staffing occurs when there are too few qualified nurses on a shift to adequately address the needs of each patient they care for. Study after study has shown that unsafe staffing hurts patient care, leading to worse health outcomes.
This is the first lockout by an employer in Hawaiʻi in 40 years.
Make no mistake: our community's safety is at stake during a lockout. On the Hawaii Nurses Association solidarity networkʻs instagram account many parents of patients are sharing disturbing stories of how the lockout has negatively affected the care of their babies and children.
Hawaiʻi Pacific Health has staffed the hospital with replacement nurses from outside of Hawaiʻi who are under qualified to provide the life-saving care our community deserves from our only specialty women’s and children’s hospital. Patient lives are at risk. Instead of addressing the concerns about retaliation, intimidation, harassment, and bullying of employees who raise unsafe staffing concerns or the underlying safe staffing concerns themselves, HPH has doubled down on their disregard for the rights of their nurses and the safety of their patients by instituting the first lockout in Hawaiʻi in 40 years. HPH said that the only way for the nurses to avoid the lockout was to unconditionally accept their most recent package proposal in contract negotiations.
But Kapiʻolani nurses are not giving in to HPH’s disgusting attempts to force a bad contract onto workers through coercion and intimidation.
Please join the Hawaʻii Nurses Association, OPEIU Local 50 and support the Kapiʻolani nurses through two important actions in solidarity:
Tell Hawaii Pacific Health Board of Directors: Safe Staffing & No Lockout!
Send a Letter to Gov. Green: protect our nurses, our mothers, our babies & children
Follow HNA on social media for upcoming actions:
Follow the Hawaii Nurses Association, OPEIU Local 50:
Follow the Hawaii Nurses Association Solidarity Network:
