UCI MEDICAL CENTER: Nurses Protest Sick-Leave Policy
Nurses working at the University of California-Irvine's Medical Center spent their lunch breaks Tuesday protesting the university's sick-leave policy, the Orange County Register reports. Participating in a statewide protest of UC system labor policies, the nurses said that they sometimes are forced to come to work with colds and fevers. Under the policy, nurses are allotted 12 sick-days a year but are penalized if those days "fall too close together." And some nurses claim they have "received verbal and written warnings for taking their accumulated sick days," prompting them to stop using those days altogether. But UC representatives say the nurses are "exaggerat[ing]" the situation. UC chief negotiator Jim Ohnesorge defended the policy saying, "We can't be in a situation where nurses who are sick come into work. But there needs to be a system in place to make sure nurses don't abuse sick leave." The university system and the California Nurses Association are currently in the midst of yearly negotiations on new nurses' contracts and are scheduled to resume talks next week (Saar, 5/4).
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