18 days of negotiations wasn’t enough to reach an agreement, so a strike has begun at South Buffalo Mercy Hospital. While the CWA and Catholic Health worked late into the night, they were still not close enough on some topics to come to a mutual conclusion triggering a strike that began at 6 am today.
The cause of the strike does not appear to be Covid-19 related but more towards labor related issues such as wages and out of pocket health care costs.
CWA Local 1133 had notified Catholic Health 10 days ago about the strike to start at shift change today, and to keep the hospital up and running, they wired several million to Huffmaster, a staffing agency for healthcare providers during strikes last Friday, and have had a temporary staff on standby. CWA represents around 2,200 registered nurses, and service, technical and clerical associates.