Jerry Blevins has stood for weeks on a picket line with his fellow nurses, thinking about his mortgage, his tearful wife, his four children. Pam Pace has been called names and listed on the "wall of shame" posted outside her hospital for crossing the picket line and continuing to work. Last week, her tires were slashed. "Someone's got to stay in here and take care of the patients," she said. It's been a stressful seven weeks for the 750 registered nurses at Appalachian Regional Healthcare, the region's largest hospital system, which has nine facilities in eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. Six hundred nurses have refused to cross the picket line.
See "Nurses' Strike Drags on in Appalachia", Samira Jafari, San Francisco Chronicle, November 15, 2007