By Jennifer Huberdeau
North Adams Transcript
NORTH ADAMS — The Massachusetts Nurses Association has put the North Adams Regional Hospital on notice — the 103 registered nurses it represents are set to strike on Sept. 3 if a contract isn’t hammered out by then.
"We feel we have been forced into this position," Ruth O’Hearn, unit chairwoman and a registered nurse who works in the intensive care unit, said Tuesday. "We came to the decision to set a strike today after we were presented with the hospital’s counter proposal during negotiations this morning. We were hoping that they would remove their most onerous requests from the proposal. We feel that we made several concessions in our latest proposal that extended an olive branch to the administration. Instead, they came back with another proposal that slammed down like a hammer."
Officials with Northern Berkshire Healthcare, the hospital’s parent organization, expressed their displeasure with the strike notice in a statement Tuesday afternoon.
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