In the Midst of a National Nurse Shortage Crisis ... Nurses Celebrate Landmark Legal...

In the Midst of a National Nurse Shortage Crisis ... Nurses Celebrate Landmark
Legal Settlement That Will Help Ensure Fair Compensation & Bring More RNs to
the Bedside

The $1.25 Million deal is the first settlement in 5 lawsuits nationally aimed
at stopping hospitals from conspiring to depress nurse wages

ALBANY, N.Y., March 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Nurses today applauded the
announcement of a settlement in a class action lawsuit which was reached
between bedside nurses and Northeast Health, a network which includes Albany
Memorial and Samaritan Hospitals. The lawsuit contends that Albany area
hospitals had for years violated federal antitrust law by sharing confidential
wage data and conspiring to depress wages for registered nurses. Nurses
hailed the settlement as an important step towards ensuring fair compensation
for their profession and helping to solve the nurse shortage crisis, thereby
improving quality of care for patients.

The $1,250,872 settlement, which is subject to court approval, includes
provisions to halt anti-competitive behavior by Northeast Health in the
future. These provisions prohibit Northeast Health from sharing current and
future nurse wage information with other healthcare facilities in the Albany
area, and give plaintiffs access to Northeast Health witnesses in order to
further prosecute the action against other area defendants. Northeast Health
is the first among Albany area hospitals to "settle out" of the lawsuit and
similar suits are moving forward in Detroit, Chicago, San Antonio and Memphis.
The SEIU Nurse Alliance has played a leading role in supporting empirical
research that has exposed the national problem of employer collusion around
nurse wages, shown the link between wage levels and the shortage of bedside
nurses, and demonstrated the importance of staffing levels for improving
patient care.

"This is a breakthrough not only for nurses, but for the people we care for
every day. For too long, hospitals cut corners when it came to valuing the
hard work of nurses. Our hope is that this is the first step towards making
sure that hospitals invest in the kind of quality care that patients deserve,"
said Cathy Glasson, RN, of the Nurse Alliance of SEIU.

"By helping to ensure competitive methods for setting RN wages, we can attract
more new nurses to the profession, bring non-practicing nurses back to the
bedside, and improve patient outcomes," said Anne Jacobs-Moultrie, a
registered nurse and Vice President of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers
East.

The class action suit ultimately seeks to recover three times the amount that
nurses in the class were underpaid. The proposed settling class consists of
direct-care nurses who were employed by certain Albany area hospitals between
June 20, 2002 and June 20, 2006. Northeast Health recently announced an
intended merger with two other area healthcare companies, St. Peter's Health
Care Services and Seton Health, but this will not effect the settlement.

The settlement comes at a time when there is an intense shortage of bedside
nurses in the Albany area and throughout the country. Because of the aging
population and advances in medical technology that require higher-skilled
staff, more nurses are needed than ever before. According to a report by the
Institute for Women's Policy Research, there is currently a shortage of more
than 13,000 nurses in New York State alone and over 1.2 million nursing
positions will need to be filled nationally over the next 5 years. The report
shows that the shortage is due in part to artificially low wages caused by
collusion amongst hospital employers in a given region.

Numerous medical studies have shown that better nurse staffing levels lead to
higher quality patient care, fewer medical mistakes and lower mortality rates.
Nurses believe that setting fair, competitive wages will also produce a
benefit for hospitals in the long-term by allowing facilities to meet their
staffing needs without resorting to mandatory overtime or expensive temporary
nurse agencies. Competitive wage practices offer hospitals the opportunity to
enhance patient outcomes and ensure medical needs are handled by competent,
compassionate nursing staff.

With more than 84,000 nurses in 23 states, the Nurse Alliance is one of the
largest nurse organizations in the country. Through the Nurse Alliance, nurses
are uniting across the country to pursue any and all solutions to bring nurses
back to the bedside and raise the standard of care -- from enforcement of
existing laws, to calling for new legislation protecting nurses and patients,
to giving nurses a voice in the delivery of patient care.

SOURCE 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East

Carter Wright of SEIU (National contact), +1-201-531-9386; or Leah Gonzalez of
1199SEIU (New York contact), +1-347-231-7231