Letter to Jason Chang, CEO
September 11, 2024
To: Jason Chang, CEO , Queen’s Executives, and Board of Trustees:
The HNA Nurses of Queen’s Manamana and West find your contract offer both inadequate and unacceptable.
You have failed to address our many concerns:
Safe Staffing Ratios For a Magnet Hospital , we should have the ability to apply safe, quality care to our patients, families and community, to achieve extraordinary results and outcomes. Instead, we are under-hired, short staffed and overwhelmed. We are barely able to provide minimal care, or are forced to give what we call drive-by-care. We are unable to safely take our breaks, and often work till we are exhausted, frequently working extra hours to cover short staffing. Over the last year, there have been nearly 100 unsafe staffing incidents that were reported and countless more that happened without being reported. Our patients deserve better.
Poor wages We are the lowest paid nurses in the nation, including the lowest paid Magnet nurses. This makes it difficult to attract and retain high quality experienced RN’s, yet you stated across the table after “researching it”, that you have no barriers to hiring!
In a letter you sent out in August, Mr. Chang, you rescinded mandatory PTO dates for non-HNA staff, stating you wanted them to use their PTO so they could refresh, relax, and return well-rested to care for our patients. Yet, this doesn’t translate to nurses. When you are under-hired there are not enough weeks for the entire staff to utilize their accrued vacation time.
Parking needs These remain unaddressed. Only a van to take RN’s to their car at Blaisdell was offered.
We have many talented, transformational nurses with great ideas in HNA, and they have put together programs, potential solutions, such as the Boarded Patient Pool, as well as many recommendations. Although you say you value your employees' input, it does not appear that way.
We urge you to meet with your Executives and Board, and return to us with proposals that are fair and meaningful.
Mahalo,
The HNA Bargaining Team
The HNA Bargaining Team, on behalf of 1,900+ covered HNA RNs