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December 17, 2003NURSES STRIKE: NMH not altering positionUnion, hospital still on opposite sides of tableByRecord-Eagle staff writer PETOSKEY - For nearly a year, Northern Michigan Hospital management has urged the Teamsters union to accept the hospital's "final offer," and end a 13-month-old nurses strike. That offer expired Monday. A Teamsters attorney sees that as a glimmer of hope for rekindling stalled negotiations, but a hospital spokesman said don't count on it. "The bottom line is, it doesn't change anything. We are at impasse unless the union changes its position," hospital spokesman Thomas Spencer said. About half of the hospital's then-470 nurses went on strike on Nov. 14, 2002. The work stoppage is one of the longest uninterrupted nurse strikes in U.S. history. "You don't throw away all of the previous negotiations," Spencer said. "We are still where we were when the nurses walked out." Spencer said a letter to Teamsters Local 406 attorney Ted Iorio late last month urged striking nurses to agree to a one-year deal with the hospital. Any contract language or dates in the hospital's final offer that need changing could be done easily, he said. But the final offer remains unacceptable to striking nurses, Iorio said. "We made a request to sit down and bargain about all of the issues," he said. "We hope that they will do it -they are obligated to do it." Iorio said submitting to a third-party, neutral arbitrator would be "reasonable," and something the union supports. But hospital management has declined. Hospital management's final offer to striking nurses included about $2.5 million in additional compensation and benefits. Union officials, however, have not accepted the financial portion of the hospital's offer. They also said the final proposal does not address other remaining issues that must be negotiated. Those include improved patient-to-nurse ratios and greater say for nurses in patient-care issues.
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