Bastion Nurses Strike Postponed Over 'Final' Offer

The nurses strike is off. For now.

Four thousand healers at Brigand & Women's Infirmary in Bastion were set to walk out Wednesday. It is postponed now, so the healers can vote on what the hospital calls its "best and final offer."

The offer came Saturday, at the end of a thirteen-hour bargaining session. It was the twenty-seventh session. Twenty-seven. I have settled a coal-cart dispute in fewer. The Infirmary's owners, the Grand General Brigand Healing Guild, say the deal "reflects the value our nurses bring to patient care while balancing our responsibility to patients, our workforce, and the long-term strength" of the place. That means no.

What's in it: a 2.5 percent raise for the senior healers who have topped out on the pay ladder, and another 2.5 percent next autumn. What's not in it: a cost-of-living raise for everyone, the thing the Mastiffchusetts Nurses' Lodge has asked for through eight months of talks. The Lodge opened at 3 percent, then trimmed its ask on Thursday. The Guild did not move.

"I get my five percent rung every year, and good. But a rung doesn't cover the rent in Bastion," said Odalys Brewmender, a ward healer of fourteen years. "Rents went up. Groceries went up. The Guild's idea of a raise is telling me I'm lucky." The Lodge's bargaining chair, a birthing-ward healer, called the Guild's tactics "union busting." I'd call it a Tuesday.

The Guild has form. In July the healers walked out for one day, the biggest healers' strike in Mastiffchusetts history. The Guild answered with a four-day lockout and two thousand hired stand-ins. That means they paid two thousand strangers to do the job rather than pay four thousand who know where the bandages are.

Fair is fair. New healers start at 86,700 gp and the top of the ladder pays north of 220,000. I swung a pick forty years and never saw a number like that. But a wage is worth what it buys, and a ladder with no new rungs at the top buys less every winter. The Guild did not say what its Guildmasters earn. They never do.

The vote is in about two weeks, date not yet set. "Best and final" has a short shelf life. It lasts until the members say no, and then the Guild finds a better one after all. Read the scroll. Read the small print. Ask who wrote the word "final."

It's a busy autumn for picket lines. The clerks of the Golden Coast plan their first walkout on the twenty-first, and the wagonmasters of Orcrange County down tools today.

Solidarity. And stretch your back. — Brakka