The KHMH workers union took a hardline over the weekend: they said they would go to work at the hospital tomorrow wearing short pants as a form of protest. That would be followed by stepped up industrial action - eventually leading to a walkout next week Monday. All because of shortages in key areas with supplies and equipment.
But, the news tonight is that they may be pulling back from that hardline after talks this evening - after more than three hours of negotiation with hospital and health authorities at the Biltmore Best Western.
Our team is on its way back from those talks - and we'll have the very latest shortly - but, before we tell you how it ended, here's how it began this afternoon
Before the meeting started, we spoke with the president about how the situation got to this point.
Andrew Baird, President, KHMHWU
"You all are well aware that in August/November of last year, we saw he formation of the coalition, where we were all addressing the issue of shortage throughout the hospitals, all regional hospitals and KHMH as well, we were not unique to those shortages and that led to a meeting with ministers of government where certain agreements were made and certain promises were made by the minister of health that the shortages will come to an end very soon. We're now in February and sad to say that those shortages of supplies, and not just shortages, but the quality, the inferior quality that we are receiving is not acceptable and so our staff at the KHMH who deals with, as the national referral center we deal with everybody throughout the country, all illnesses, especially those that are emergencies and we are tired of having to be improvising and have to be out of pocket to purchase certain supplies that is needed for patient care."
Reporter
"And so why would the CEO then say that some of the things listed in the press release, that you have those things in stock and that it's not exactly true that those things are short apart from the CT Scan machine."
Andrew Baird, President, KHMHWU
"Well, she will say that because whenever the union or the employees start to make noise, what they do, they come up with a short amount of stocks and say oh see we have something in stock. If you notice, in her notes that she sent to the media, she said that as of the 7th of February, we met the 24th of January, so before then indeed there was a shortage, but as off the 7th of February, it was two days after our press release I believe, all of a sudden we have supplies."
"The executive of our union was mandated by the members to take the necessary actions for management to hear our cries, those actions led to tomorrow and Thursday where our staff decided they want to wear a short pants with their uniform shirt, this short pants signifies the shortages that we are having within the institution."
"What I want to saw to the CEO, today's theme for the meeting for our union, lies cost lives."
He also explained that another issue that prompted the protests was job security, since a number of staff members - including an entire security department - are currently on contracts, some of which will expire within the next couple months.
