Temple Nurses Win Another Victory

Last March nurses at Temple Hospital went on strike for a month to protest, among other things, the elimination of tuition benefits, a "gag rule" that prevented nurses from criticizing the hospital, understaffing issues, and of course wages and benefits.  It's rare that workers these days will strike.  It's rarer still that they win -- After a month on the picket line the strike settled, with the tuition rule modified and the gag order lifted. 

This week the nurses won another victory, when the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry found that the nurses were locked out, rather than strikers.  The decision means that the nurses will receive unemployment benefits for the weeks they were out on strike.

Under Pennsylvania's unemployment law, strikers receive no unemployment benefits, while employees who are "locked out" do.  The distinction comes down to who altered the status quo.  If an employer changes the terms and conditions of employment it has changed the status quo, and therefore workers are entitled to benefits.

In the Temple case, the hospital changed the status quo because it unilaterally altered the tuition benefit before the workers walked out.  By doing so, the Unemployment Board found that it had altered the status quo and essentially caused the strike.

The decision is doubly painful for Temple because it will be on the hook for the payments.  Most employers pay unemployment insurance to pay for unemployment claims.  Some larger employers like Temple, however, are self insured, which means that Temple will have to shell out something like a million and a half dollars.  That's not all Temple had to pay for the strike.  It is estimated that Temple spent something like 40 million on strike replacements during the strike.  Of course, it could have kept the tuition reimbursement in place and shown workers some respect by not insisting on a gag rule in the first place.  Seems like an expensive price to pay for a couple of items that didn't cost the hospital much in the first place.