By JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE — Threatening to go on strike as soon as Thursday, hundreds of unionized nurses and other unionized workers at Butler Hospital clogged the entrance to the usually sedate Blackstone Boulevard campus Monday, whooping, hollering, blowing whistles, carrying signs, shaking plastic bottles filled with pebbles — and when all those things didn’t make enough noise, encouraging passing drivers to blast their horns — in a raucous informational picket line.

While pay raises and some other economic issues are still on the negotiating table, Stan Israel, executive vice president of Local 1199 SEIU (Service Employees International Union), said the principal stumbling block is a management proposal to allow the permanent use of so-called “traveling” nurses at the facility along with staff employees.
Traveling nurses are non-union temporary contract employees, often hired through an agency, who perform the same functions as the full-time nurses and mental health workers at the 117-bed psychiatric hospital. They are often used to fill in for employees on vacation, holidays or leaves of absence.
Israel described the use of traveling nurses as “a way of outsourcing” that he maintains is more expensive than recruiting and retaining full-time nurses.
 “This is a quick-fix way of staffing that is not good for patient care,” Israel asserted. “It causes a lot of strain on the regular employees who are there when they are working with employees who are not used to the place, not used to the patients, not used to the kind of work they do.
“It is very specialized working in psych nursing,” he added, “and our nurses and mental health workers are very good at what they do. This is a first-class institution. We want to keep it that way.”
Local 1199 represents about 300 nurses, mental health workers and service and maintenance personnel at Butler.
He said there were about 200 workers on the picket line at various times
during the three-hour demonstration, some fellow union members from Women & Infants Hospital, which, like Butler is a Care New England hospital.
Women & Infants does not use traveling nurses, Israel said.
Asked to comment on the union action, Patti Melaragno, director marketing and public affairs at the hospital, issued a statement that said: “Butler Hospital continues to negotiate with District 1199 New England Healthcare Employees Union SEIU on the contract that expired April 1, 2008. The hospital’s major concern is ensuring that we have enough qualified staff to care for our patients and meet the requirements of the new mandatory overtime law, which took effect March 4, 2008.
“Given the current nursing shortage,” the statement continued, “it is imperative that the hospital have access to agency or travel nurses to fill gaps created by vacations, leaves of absence, or vacancies. The hospital continues its efforts to recruit nurses. We are hopeful that we will come to an agreement with the union on this issue.”
Negotiations are scheduled to resume today and Wednesday and Israel said the union is also hopeful that an agreement can be reached and a strike averted. The union voted 188 to 4 to go on strike at the hospital beginning on Thursday at 6 a.m. if no agreement can be reached.
“This could be solved in three hours, or not at all,” Israel told reporters as noisy picketers milled around nearby.
The union cites research it says shows that nurses who are unfamiliar with a hospital’s procedures and practices are more prone to make dangerous errors. It also claims that temporary employees have little commitment to the community, to a hospital’s mission, or to their fellow employees.  The workers claim the practice of relying on “traveling” nurses to staff a hospital is also expensive, “as money is diverted from patient care into the profits of travel agencies that contract with hospitals to provide nurses.”