Reasons for the nurse shortage and gathering information about working conditions
Ziegler discusses her thoughts on the perceived "nursing shortage," arguing that the problem is not necessarily that there are not enough nurses, but rather that working conditions for nurses are so bad that nurses leave the profession in high numbers. In describing the situation, Ziegler outlines how she and other NPO activists had been gathering information since their first failed election in 1989 in an effort to build stronger cases against mismanagement, discrimination, and poor working conditions.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Gemma Ziegler, June 22, 2006. Interview U-0181. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- SARAH THUESEN:
-
You hear so much about the nursing shortage in America and an outsider to
this story might think that that would give you tremendous leverage in
this situation. Why do you think that hasn't helped more?
- GEMMA ZIEGLER:
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One, there's not a nursing shortage. I don't care
what anybody says. It's a shortage of nurses willing to put
up with the conditions. There are nurses. They're leaving
right and left. They'll go into other areas. Other things
have opened up for them. They retire. They sell real estate.
Soffia's daughter's a nurse. She builds houses
now. There's lots of nurses, but they're not going
to put up with those conditions. The leverage, they don't
care. They just don't care. They don't care what
we do. They'll come up with something. They don't
look at the big picture. They live from day to day and
they'll just make whoever's there stay and work
longer. They just don't care, they
really don't. It sounds petty when I was talking about the
crackers, but going back to Nurses' Day, they give nurses a
sippie cup for Nurses' Day with the hospital's
name on it. One nurse said, "I'm waiting for them to
give us a feedbag to hang around our necks so we don't have
to—." Most nurses don't get their breaks
or lunch, they really, really don't. I told you about the
nurse wearing a diaper because she didn't get her breaks in
ICN. She said, "I can't leave the babies and
there's nobody to relieve me." So she has to relieve
herself in her diaper and she's a young nurse.
She's in her thirties. I just don't think it makes
any difference to them. They'll get around it one way or
another.
One way they were trying to get around it, Norton brought in nurses from
the Philippines, trying to bring workers in that they could, I guess,
dominate or have something over. They put them up in a hotel and they
paid for their apartment: "We brought you in here and now
you're slaves to us forever." They get around it.
They get around it by going to the Board of Nursing and trying to get
other professionals in the hospital to do some of the work that the
nurses normally do and eliminate some of the process that way. And the
housekeeping, I mean we had the most wonderful housekeeper who would
stand up to management. She would speak to the press. We've
had to get her job back a couple of times, but she's still
there, Wilma.
- SARAH THUESEN:
-
Wilma.
- GEMMA ZIEGLER:
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A wonderful person.
- SARAH THUESEN:
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What's her last name?
- GEMMA ZIEGLER:
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McCombs.
- SARAH THUESEN:
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Yes, I saw a reference to her in a newspaper article.
- GEMMA ZIEGLER:
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She's wonderful. She went to the paper about, they fired all
their housekeepers. This was downtown in Audubon. I don't
know about Suburban. They brought in contract labor. About that time
after they did it, Kay and I were out at the Ramada Inn for something,
an event or something. I can't remember why we were out
there. And we see these workers standing in front of the Ramada with
shirts on that say, "Norton Hospital." So we hop out
of the car and ask them. They were brought up from Atlanta or Tennessee
and they were putting them up here. We didn't wonder if they
were some of the prisoners that you hear about. You know, they hire
prisoners in other states to do work. We never could prove it, but that
was our gut feeling from talking to these guys. They wouldn't
say what they did down there, but it was like, "We
don't know. We don't know. We're from
Tennessee." So then when Wilma went to the press about that
they didn't have enough disinfectant in the hospital to
disinfect, not enough toilet paper. Toilet paper was kept under lock and
key. The staff couldn't get the toilet paper unless they had
the key. It was a big article in the paper about her and she spoke out.
And within thirty days, they hired back all their old housekeepers.
So I mean, that's the power, that's the power of
the people. Even though we don't have a formalized union,
when you work with people and you have people brave enough to risk and
some of them have lost their jobs, but like I said, we've
gotten almost every single one of them back. One nurse we
didn't get back, but I think she went over the line to where
we couldn't help her. It wasn't really, it
wasn't about the union. It was about something else. So it
was hard for us to defend her after she said the stuff that she said at
the hospital. It was really hard for us to defend her. We used to tell
nurses, "Keep everything the hospital gives you, every memo,
everything. Take it home, file it. You find a box and stick it in
there." And that's what Kay taught us. She taught us
from the very beginning save everything. Don't throw anything
away. Collect any new memo that comes out. Collect
any new, what did they used to call that, job description. Collect every
bit of information. And when we had to go to court, whether it was for
the union hearing, Jane's case, we had nurses inside
collecting stuff for us, bringing stuff they had at home. The
documentation, the NLRB couldn't believe all the
documentation we had. I mean, we had drawers full, files. For a little
organization, we had, I think it was twelve or sixteen file cabinets
full. Now it wasn't all stuff from the hospital, but we had
probably three cabinets just full of stuff from the hospitals, all their
documents and their manager's manual. We got a hold of it
all. Of course, we got a hold of the price list. That's why
we were on Primetime.