Boycotts and Pickets

In a major show of support for the “Hyatt 100,” nurses from hospitals throughout metropolitan Boston will join the protest against the hotel chain. Thursday’s rally, which coincides with demonstrations in nine cities across the country, is part of the national outcry against the Hyatt corporation.

Verizon employees picketed yesterday morning near the headquarters off Trotter Drive to protest proposed contract changes. Their contract ends Aug. 6, said union President Keith Herrick, who worries that employees will lose hard-fought provisions.

Fifty to seventy-five members of the Andover Education Association held a brief rally in the downtown last Thursday, June 2, as teachers wind down the school year without a new contract between them and the town's School Committee.

Some of Channel 7’s on-air personalities are threatening to boycott the station’s annual Health and Fitness Expo — where viewers can mingle with the likes of anchor Frances Rivera and meteorologist Peter Bouchard — unless management gives them a “fair contract.” Members of the local union representing Channel 7’s anchors, reporters and meteorologists — the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — have been in contract negotiations for more than two years and “voted overwhelmingly” to spurn the Hub event.

Federal regulators said yesterday that union activists have the right to display giant inflatable rats — a tactic that has been used often in Greater Boston — outside of companies during labor disputes.

A collection of stories from various sources about the nurses' picket on the Cape.

Holding signs that read “Safe Staffing Now, Protect Our Patients, and Mandatory Overtime is Unhealthy for Nurses and Patients,” registered nurses from Cape Cod and Falmouth Hospitals held an informational picket and rally outside the main entrance of Cape Hospital today to protest Cape Cod Health Care administration’s refusal to provide adequate RN staffing, safe working conditions and the resources needed to ensure patients receive quality patient care at these two facilities serving all of Cape Cod. A second picketing outside Falmouth Hospital is scheduled for Friday, May 20 from 2-5 p.m.

Members of IBEW Local 103, sometimes accompanied by a large inflatable rat, have been protesting the hospital's decision not to automatically hire union workers for the expansion project. As part of their protests, IBEW Local 103 members have been highlighting malpractice payments made by Anna Jaques Hospital-affiliated doctors throughout their medical careers.

Our actions provide the hospital and the doctors with a stake in the game on who they actually contract to do electrical work at their facility. They will know the difference between contractors who provide health coverage for their workers, who ironically pay the doctors' bills and salaries, and contractors that provide no such health care at all for their workforce.