Today, the president of the union responded to the decision by the board. Speaking by phone he said he believes this is premature - and that they first should have been given a chance to go back to the negotiating table:
Voice of: Andrew Baird, President - KHMHWU
"We will be, we will be sitting with our legal minds over the next couple of days to chart a way or determined how we can deal with this matter. But certainly, for us, we believe that an opportunity must be given to us to come back us and go back to the table and make a counter position as mandated by our members."
"The Minister has the authority to send back both parties to the table and we are hoping that the Minister will see it in that light to say listen, we will go back to the table because the union was not given a fair opportunity to make a counter."
Baird also addressed yesterday's sickout - where e40 persons - him included called in sick. It caused a disruption in certain key services and here's how he explained it:
Voice of: Andrew Baird, President - KHMHWU
"When I come to call in sick, I cannot tell nobody that they can't call in sick or they cannot take a sick leave. How the union is to blame for that. Maybe there is a bunch of disgruntled workers in the institution, and the CEO and those management are not looking up the interest of the people."
"Who knows? Maybe there is a bacteria something was going on in the hospital and the staff got sick. Have they check to see if there is anything abnormal going on. Yesterday I myself was ill and I did not show up to work."
"We are entitled to sick leave. It is not something that Karl Heusner has given to us."
Reporter
"What about the Hemodialysis section?"
Voice of: Andrew Baird, President - KHMHWU
"I was made to understand there was a nurse or two at the Hemodialysis, but just that amount of patients in comparison to the nurses there was not enough for them to do dialysis for some of the patients."
But one sickout narrative that Baird rejected was a post by one social media news page saying that the neonatal intensive care unit had been abandoned by the nurses assigned to that key unit. Here's how he responded:
Voice of: Andrew Baird, President - KHMHWU
"Karl Huesner well know that there were eight nurses in the NICU yesterday and there was 13 babies. The ratio in the NICU is normally two patients to one nurse with 13 and 13 patients and eight nurses."
"That was well satisfactory with the amount of staff that was needed for such. So that was falsification and pure political rhetoric from that media house."
