Hospital Strike

In Pittsburgh last week doctors, nurses and dietitians were busy washing dishes and scrubbing floors of 600-bed Western Pennsylvania Hospital, second largest in the city. The hospital attendants were on strike. For 14 months Hospital Superintendent Mark Henry Eichenlaub refused to enter negotiations with the C.I.O. hospital employes' union (a branch of the State, County & Municipal Workers Union). Last month, practically all 378 laundry workers, orderlies and kitchen help walked out.

The union asked that monthly wages be increased from $38 to $45, a sum still below the minimum of the Fair Labor Standards Act. But Mr. Eichenlaub replied that the hospital was short of funds. Climax of the strike came when he tried to obtain an injunction against picketing. The municipal judge to whom the case was referred lay sick in bed in the struck hospital. Judge Frank Plunkett Patterson substituted for him, issued an order which Pittsburgh papers called "the most drastic picketing injunction of modern times."

Although West Penn is a voluntary (private) hospital, it receives about $75,000 a year (8% of its income) from the State. Judge Patterson ruled that the hospital was part of the State Government, restrained the union from picketing, writing letters, distributing pamphlets, publishing advertisements, uttering "epithets, jeers . . . taunts."

A few days later Judge Patterson relented a little, allowed the pickets to march up & down within certain limits. Meanwhile, dietitians, doctors and nurses did the hospital's dirty work. Since unionized commercial laundries refused to do the hospital's wash, one doctor took home a heap of dirty diapers for his wife to do.

Since she was out playing bridge, he did them himself.

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