Two Southern California hospitals that are part of one of the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chains, Tennessee-based Community Health Systems, are facing major sanctions from the federal government for significant abuses of the democratic rights of their registered nurses. In a scathing decision issued late last week, a federal administrative law judge has asked the federal labor board to order Fallbrook Hospital in northern San Diego County to end illegal evasive tactics and return to contract negotiations with its registered nurses.

California’s Department of Occupational Health and Safety has slapped Sutter corporation’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland with multiple fines totaling $142,970 – including two “willful serious” safety violations at the maximum penalty of $70,000 each for failure to properly isolate patients that threatened to expose other patients, visitors, and staff to major diseases such as tuberculosis (TB). Nurses will discuss the safety violations at a 12:15 rally, at the hospital, 350 Hawthorne, Oakland

Opponents to the closing will present testimony detailing the devastating impact the loss of this service will have on the vulnerable children of greater Taunton. Steward’s decision violates its promise to the community to maintain all services at Morton Hospital, and will mean sick children will be boarded in the busy emergency department or shipped to Boston, Providence or Fall River for care.

Registered Nurses at Good Samaritan and Regional Medical Center in San Jose have scheduled a two-day strike May 23 and May 24 to protest the refusal of hospital officials to move forward in efforts to end the contract dispute with nurses which centers in large part on proposed elimination of the nurses’ pension plan, and concerns about hospital staffing. East Bay Sutter RNs also set to Strike Beginning May 17.