February 1, 2010 - Volume 10, Number 3
ACTION NEEDED: Meal and Rest Breaks
Background: House Bill (HB) 3024, addressing hospital employee meal and rest breaks, was passed out of the House Commerce and Labor Committee on Friday, January 29, 2010. The bill requires uninterrupted breaks for not just nurses, but all hospital employees.
The bill requires hospitals to provide employees uninterrupted 30-minute meal breaks and at least ten-minute rest breaks. The legislation also states that reporting a missed break is not grounds for any employment action adverse to the employee. WSHA strongly opposes the unions’ proposed legislation.
The bill will now go to the full House for a vote. We need clear messages to House members that a vote in favor of the bill is a vote against their hospital.
Action Needed: Please contact all your House members directly as soon as possible with the following message. (To find your legislators’ contact information, go to www.leg.wa.gov or see WSHA’s spreadsheet of hospitals and legislators.)
Message: ?Please vote against House Bill 3024, which addresses hospital employee meal and rest breaks. The legislation is dangerous to patients. It requires all hospital employees, including physicians and other highly skilled health care workers, to take uninterrupted breaks every four hours. Among its many problems, the bill provides no exemptions for procedures such as complicated surgeries, which means anesthesiologists, surgeons, and nurse anesthetists would have to walk out of surgeries for their state-law required breaks.
The bill removes caregivers’ professional judgment about when interruptions to a break are reasonable, given patient needs. It also eliminates a caregiver’s ability to arrange his or her break time based on personal needs, such as calling to check in with a child at a certain time or the desire to take breaks with friends.
Meal and rest break concerns should be handled through collective bargaining or, for non-unionized hospitals, through nurse staffing committees in order to preserve flexibility.?
BUDGET CUTS: Outstanding Testimony
Thank you to Scott Bosch, CEO of Harrison Medical Center in Bremerton, for providing excellent and compelling testimony last week at the House Health and Human Services Appropriations Committee on behalf of all WSHA members! Scott outlined the impacts last year’s budget cuts have had on hospitals and their patients. He warned legislators about the severe impacts the Governor’s proposed budget cuts could bring. You can see Scott’s PowerPoint or watch a video of his testimony (Scott’s testimony is first on this video.)