Saint Vincent spent upward of $31M in battle against striking nurses
Photo | Grant Welker
Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester
Saint Vincent Hospital likely spent, at the most modest estimate, upward of $30 million in staffing and police detail costs over the course of a 301-day nurses strike, which officially ended Monday.
Saint Vincent declined to say how much the 43-week strike cost, but a combination of public information and average wage rates for nurses provides some insight.
The most concrete figure available is what the hospital, owned by Texas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp., was billed for police detail related to picketing. That figure was $4.1 million as of Monday, according to the Worcester city manager’s office.
Saint Vincent reports having at least 200 traveling nurses on-hand since the strike first began on March 8. According to data from ZipRecruiter, those positions usually earn about $50 per hour. Over the course of 43 weeks, that’s $17.2 million spent on traveling nurses, alone, assuming they worked 40 hours per week at the average rate. They likely worked more than that, and for higher pay.
By the third week of May, Saint Vincent reported hiring 102 replacement nurses, a number that rose to 200 over the course of the following 18 weeks. According to Indeed, the average base hourly wage for a nurse in Massachusetts is $43.85.
That means that, assuming the replacement nurses worked 40 hours per week at $43.85 per hour – although it’s reasonable to expect they probably worked more hours than that at a higher rate – Saint Vincent would have spent $3.2 million on replacement nurses between May 18 and Sept. 20, at which point the number of replacement nurses doubled to 200.
For the remaining 18 weeks of the strike, then, Saint Vincent would have spent $6 million on replacement nurses, total, at the lowest, most modest estimate.
All together, that brings the total estimate to $30.5 million spent over the course of the 301-day work stoppage. That number increases again according to reporting from the Boston Business Journal, which obtained job listings from April indicating replacement nurse wages were posted at twice the average rate, bringing the total figure in the realm of $40 million – still a modest estimate, assuming nurses were only working 40 hours per week while short-staffed during a pandemic.
The strike, which largely hinged on staffing ratios, officially ended Monday when union nurses voted to ratify a new contract tentatively agreed to on Dec. 17, following more than nine months of picketing, two weeks of discussions with federal mediators, and an in-person session mediated by U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh.
Saint Vincent said it plans to recall all striking nurses by Jan. 22. Whether or not striking nurses would be allowed to return to their previous positions had been the final sticking point, stalling the strike’s end between August and December.
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How much will the total additional nursing costs be per year over the course of the new contract?
And, will those total additional costs be more, less, or about the same as the $31 million that Tenet spent to fight the striking nurses?
In other words, was this a smart financial gamble by Tenet, or a stupid one?
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