hundreds of nurses could soon hit the picket line the union representing roughly 1500 nurses at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick today issued a strike notice it's a warning giving health care workers the ability to walk off the job 10 days from now if contract negotiations aren't settled the union is pushing for more Staffing and better pay rejecting the most recent contract offer from the hospital those issues are being echoed by Hospital workers across the state like in Essex County where nurses from another hospital rallied this weekend voicing their own concerns as Melissa Rose Cooper reports a strike of this magnitude could have severe consequences I work through a pandemic prior to joining uh the postpartum unit that I'm on now and if it was for money I would have left a long time ago and so with my colleagues instead Lia Devers registered nurse at Clara Mass Medical Center says her dedication to help the community is once keeping her there but she feels inadequate Staffing at the hospital is putting her patients as well as herself in danger so if I don't have ancillary support to help and I have eight patients um to take care of that's going to make it way more difficult I can't answer call bills the way I want to I can't rush to an emergency if I need to so those are really some of the things that's really important when it comes to having adequate Staffing I don't feel protected the patients won't feel protected and it definitely makes my job a lot more difficult the Vera is one of hundreds hundreds of nurses at Clara Maas fighting for better working conditions we are constantly being thrown into situations that make us feel unsafe and the attitude from management is like deal with it they think it's okay to give us up to eight patients regularly like that's okay that's not okay we can't do what we need to do and it causes undue stress on us last year nurses voted to unionize with 1199 SEIU so their concerns could be addressed but to date negotiations have been unsuccessful union members voice their frustrations over the weekend at this rally outside of the hospital when our nurses came to bargain and they've been bargaining for many months now and they were bargaining as soon as this week when they spoke up and said we need to do something about the Staffing levels at our facility we want to make sure our patients are going to be okay did management say we hear you and we're going to do right no otherwise we would be here but we'd be at the park having some fun we're here today because what management did is walked away this comes as nurses at RWJ University Hospital failed to agree on the latest contract proposal some of the issues include short staffing um we still have they have hired nurses but we're still using 120 Travelers um on any given day within the hospital so the Staffing is not up to par that the nurses wanted to be you know they want ratios in the contract they want specific guidelines they did put guidelines in our tentative agreement but the guidelines did not take into account if a nurse is out sick the guideline included The Travelers so the nurses were not happy that if they were sick that it would penalize their own floor along the way they wanted actual ratios in the contract now they're preparing to go on strike next week if an agreement can't be reached something the staff at Clara Maas is hoping to avoid we don't have the resources that Tom I see at other hospitals which makes our job so much harder right but it also makes each and every one of these people behind me some of the best damn nurses you don't ever have in your life we reached out to RWJ Barnabas health for comments and are waiting for a response staff say they just want to get what they deserve and they won't stop fighting until it happens for NJ Spotlight News I'm Melissa Rose Cooper