LANSING, Mich. — Some nurses at McLaren Health Care are voluntarily going on furlough. Now, they're asking executives to make more sacrifices of their own.
"We're just hoping that the management and the CEO's will also do that because right now I'm not aware of any of that happening," said Josh Straus, a McLaren nurse.
Straus said he and several other colleagues agreed to voluntarily go on furlough because they believed it would help in the long-run. He said since the hospital stopped elective procedures, he tried moving to a different department in hopes he would continue working.
"That's one of the things I attempted to do before I accepted the voluntary furlough, I was attempting to be cross-trained to ICU and the ER, to anywhere basically in the hospital to just get my hours to avoid the furlough, but I was unable to have those hours or to get that opportunity," Straus said.
The nurses union says that's part of the reason they're demanding McLaren executives take a pay cut.
"If every executive at McLaren were to cut their salary by $1 million, there would be over $8 million that could go back into frontline care workers," Andrea Acevedo, Nurses Union President said.
McLaren responded in a statement to FOX 47 stating 850 people in leadership positions including the CEO have taken pay cuts to support their front-line workers.
The hospital also says workers are getting extra paid time off and have access to state and local benefits.
The union wants more, it's asking McLaren to commit to no executive making more than $1 million this year with the additional funds going to cross-training employees and making sure they have enough staff to care for patients.
McLaren says the cutbacks are necessary because the number of patients at hospitals, outpatient clinics, and physician practices are down 60 to 85% since the pandemic began.
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