nurses at RWJ University Hospital are starting week five of a strike that started in early August the nurses demanding Better Staffing ratios and increased pay from their employer which is part of the RWJ Barnabas health system that is an underwriter of NJ Spotlight news but with no deal in sight the nurses today have now lost their health insurance coverage through the hospital I'm joined Now by president of the nurses Union Judy danella to give us the latest Judy thanks so much for taking the time to be with us today now as of today this is the beginning of week five of your nurses strike also today your health insurance coverage is stopped by the hospital and your nurses now need to pay for coverage through Cobra just explain what's happening there correct our benefits ended um 91 1201 and the nurses now are without insurance they can take a supplemental plan by the usw which is a basic plan or we can Cobra our benefits if we have medical issues or we can go through the open market and say in Obamacare type of plan so we can use either of those but the hospital which is a self-insured program has cut off our benefits Judy is that something you knew going in we did not no we did not um the hospital is going to say we did again 100 say we did not know that these benefits would end on September 1st uh when we went on strike in 2006 they covered our benefits throughout because again they're self-insured so they own the policy and can do what they want we did not know now the hospital is saying that they've taken many steps to avoid getting to this point to avoid a strike including agreeing to some of the Staffing and compensation demands made by the nurses Union they say that they had signed a memorandum of agreement with the Union that they say the union never presented to the members is that true and if so why was that not presented if you look or see any of our members we gave out to every member that walked in that door of the tentative agreement it was definitely definitely presented as a tentative agreement we presented it the members voted it down the members did not like we have guidelines the hospital has to be penalized for the guidelines if they're not met with the Staffing ratios because what they put into effect is the same thing we've had in place for 10 years with no enforcement so we wanted an enforcement therefore the enforcement is where the members voted it down and they continue to penalize a nurse that calls out sick so Judy just to clarify you're talking about enforcement if the hospital does not meet state required Staffing ratios that's correct nurses get sick being a bedside nurse so they wanted to penalize the nurses for that so what is the solution how do you move forward from here what needs to happen for there to be resolution and get these nurses back to work back to having salaries back to having health insurance I think the mediator has to call us together and both of both sides have to come through with a serious proposal we gave a proposal on August 16th and the hospital rejected it they never came back with accountant proposal we're waiting on them to come back with a county proposal it seems like they're not going to come back with a counter proposal and that's where we stand very quickly what are the sticking points for you that need to happen right now to get your nurses back to work pretty much remove the SQL penalty and um What's called the core deficit and I think that that would solve the problem very quickly Judy danella president United steelworkers Local 4200 thank you so much