HPAE Files Federal Complaint over Virtua Health Giving Frontline Healthcare Workers Defective Respirators

New Jersey’s largest union of nurses and healthcare professionals has filed a complaint with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) against Virtua Health for providing frontline workers defective, inadequate and non-approved personal protective equipment (PPE).

Proper PPE and especially respirators can protect frontline caregivers caring for COVID-positive patients or people who may have been exposed to the virus from contracting the disease, therefore helping reduce the rate of infection among those workers.

Unionized nurses at Virtua Memorial Hospital in Mount Holly have been reporting that the hospital has been providing them unapproved “KN95s,” instead of the NIOSH-approved N95 respirators, even though they often work in high risk situations.

Healthcare workers and other staff at the Virtua Memorial Hospital Burlington County in Mount Holly, New Jersey reported that facility administrators supplied them with the KN95 masks on Friday, April 10, 2020. Some of the defective masks have nose pieces and straps that were damaged. Workers reported Virtua administrators did not fit-test them for the new masks, as required.

HPAE Local 5105 represents Registered Nurses at Virtua Memorial Health in Mount Holly, NJ, Virtua Community Services, and Virtua’s Center for Women.

HPAE leaders at the facility inquired about and protested the use of these masks on April 13th, yet the counterfeit masks were still circulating a week later.

HPAE President Debbie White, RN, said it is unconscionable that these heroic workers still have to work with defective equipment at this late date in a global pandemic.

“As a union, we are advocates for our workers and our patients,” White said. “Healthcare workers need to be able to work safely without fear of contracting the virus and transmitting it to other patients, coworkers, or their families. They must have genuine N95 respirators and must be fit-tested for those respirators to ensure there’s a seal of the mask around their faces. If it’s not sealed, it’s not safe.”

It is unbelievable that Virtua put the lives of these brave healthcare workers who have sacrificed so much at risk, she added.

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HPAE is the largest union of registered nurses and health care professionals in New Jersey. Since its founding by Englewood Hospital nurses in 1974, HPAE has expanded across the state and into Southeastern Pennsylvania representing 13,000 nurses, social workers, therapists, technicians, medical researchers, and other health care professionals in hospitals, nursing homes, home care agencies, blood banks, and university research facilities. HPAE is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO.