Storm Brews Over Snow-Related Firings at DC Hospital
Here’s a winter storm warning: show up for work during a blizzard or lose your job.
Washington Hospital Center has fired eight more employees who didn’t show up for work during last month’s snowstorms that blanketed DC, the Washington Post reports today. That’s on top of 16 workers who had been previously fired. Three of those people have now been rehired, putting the termination count at 21 — 15 nurses and six support people, according to the WaPo.
The storms were doozies but the hospital prided itself on keeping operations as normal as possible (see video below). In a staff memo released by the hospital, CEO Harrison J. Rider III said that “most of us served selflessly, but some chose not to come to work and walked away from the commitment they made to the patients and their fellow associates.” See more in this report.
Union officials said they were “bewildered” by the firings and an official of the American Nurses Association told the Post she didn’t know of any other hospital taking similar action. Union reps said about 250 of the hospital’s 1,600 nurses didn’t report for shifts at some point during Washington’s storms between Feb. 5 and Feb 11, according to […]
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