Eight months ago, several hundred nurses walked off the job at St. Vincent’s hospital in Worcester because they believed staffing levels and work conditions made it difficult to keep patient safe. The labor dispute between the nurses and Tenet, the company that runs the hospital, is still ongoing.
Saint Vincent nurse and co-chair of the Massachusetts Nurses Association's local bargaining unit, Marlena Pellegrino, joined Jim Braude on Greater Boston to discuss.
Pellegrino has been a nurse at St. Vincent’s for 35 years and doesn’t regret taking a stand. “I would have never believed it that I would be up here for this long, but no regrets,” he said. “This is something that we needed to do to advocate for our patients and the community. We tried everything else.”
Braude noted that the company has made hundreds of millions of dollars in profits in 2021. “There is no shame in this corporation,” Pellegrino said. “The’ve profited off the pandemic, they’ve profited off patient’s suffering.”
WATCH: 'There actually is no shame in this corporation,’ says St. Vincent’s nurse on strike
