United Nurses and Allied Professionals Local 5098 hold an informational picket at Rhode Island Hospital

We're trying to draw some attention. We've been in negotiations with the hospital. We're looking at staffing, we're looking at safety, we're looking at hiring and staffing retention.

The United Nurses and Allied Professionals (UNAP) Local 5098, representing the nurses and healthcare workers at Rhode Island Hospital, held an informational picket on Friday on the sidewalk at Dudley and Eddy Streets.

The UNAP and Brown University Health management have been bargaining for contracts with nurses and healthcare workers at Rhode Island Hospital, but Brown University Health has failed to provide safety protections for nurses and healthcare workers, or offer a contract that provides safe staffing levels, a safe, affordable health insurance plan, or family-sustaining wages. Simultaneously, Brown University Health is spending its vast resources doling out multimillion-dollar executive salaries, buying up Massachusetts hospitals, and running glitzy Super Bowl ads on television.

I spoke to two of the union negotiators, Sherry Ann Johnson, UNAP vice preisdent and anurse at Rhode Island Hospital and Frank Sims, UNAP Local President with 14 years on the job as a nurse at Rhode Island Hospital.

Here’s the video:

Steve Ahlquist: Can you tell me why we are here today and what we're trying to accomplish with this protest?

Frank Sims: We're trying to draw some attention. We've been in negotiations with the hospital. We're looking at staffing, we're looking at safety, we're looking at hiring and staffing retention.

Sherry Ann Johnson: We're not retaining people here at the hospital. We're looking for a fair contract that addresses all of those issues - unsafe working environment, which also affects our patients, safe staffing levels, as well as competitive health insurance.

Steve Ahlquist: Health insurance - ironic. How have the negotiations been going? Usually when you have one of these, it's not because they're been going great,

Frank Sims: They're ongoing. We certainly hope to get the hospital to bend on some things, make some improvements around here, make this a better place to work.

Steve Ahlquist: When you talk about retention, what seems to be some of the stumbling blocks? What are you asking for in that way?

Sherry Ann Johnson: Again, it's a comprehensive benefits package, right? The health insurance being a sticking point. The health insurance being proposed is unaffordable for many. We don't have staffing levels to a par that's really safe for our patients. And competitive wages as well. People are coming, we're training them, and then we're losing them as quick as they're coming in.

Steve Ahlquist: Where are they going? Massachusetts?

Sherry Ann Johnson: Other hospitals.

Frank Sims: Other hospitals in Massachusetts and Connecticut. We have a lot of travelers, which takes money out of state.

Steve Ahlquist: Basically, you're training people, spending all that time, getting them up up to snuff, and then they take off for better salaries and you're back to square one.

Sherry Ann Johnson: Agreed.

Frank Sims: A lot of the processes that the hospital puts into place as far as hiring bonuses, if this isn't a good place to work, when that hiring bonus wears off, someone else will have a hiring bonus.

Sherry Ann Johnson: The other thing we're out here for too is a safe working environment, a lot of our workers don't feel safe. We've seen a lot of nurses who have been assaulted. We have unsafe situations that are happening and we're fighting for measures to prevent those sort of situations from being ongoing. We're asking for provisions in our contract to protect our workers so they feel safe here.

Steve Ahlquist: And is that things like staffing, mental health providers, and stuff like that?

Frank Sims: It is. We improved the contract. The board worked really hard. Anything that we could find in there that would be an improvement or make this place a better place to work, we proposed it so it was on the table and we could talk about it. I mean, we came up with over a hundred proposals.

Steve Ahlquist: A hundred proposals, and I bet some of them are probably free to do, they're not very costly, I bet.

Frank Sims: Absolutely correct.

Steve Ahlquist: I know how those kind of comprehensive proposals work. There's like 90 of them, which are easy to do. And then there's 10 which become sticking points.

Sherry Ann Johnson: Agreed.

Steve Ahlquist: You feel like the negotiations are going okay, you're going to get there?

Frank Sims: It's going to depend on the hospital. We're willing to work with the hospital. Obviously, we're here to try to do to make this place better. Whether the hospital reciprocates in that way, I won't know until we get further down the road.

Steve Ahlquist: I know that my family depends on this hospital working. My wife and my daughter have had procedures here so it's very important to me. I wish you all the luck.

Sherry Ann Johnson: Thank you for saying that. We appreciate that. Our patients are first and foremost, the most important job is providing high quality care.

Frank Sims: Every one of these guys would rather be inside. Hopefully we get to a place where we can do that.

Steve Ahlquist: I'm sure. Although it's a nice day. Thank you, both of you. Good luck.