Bey Turner, Float nurse:

I've always worked there. I've been on and off working there. This was the third time—I quit, got married and had kids. And the working conditions never improved one iota from the very first time I worked there after graduating until the last time I went back after having my children. I really believe that this is a good cause.

I used to picket three days a week and now that I have another job I'm down to one day a week, which is Saturday. But I don't want to leave them in the lurch.

Well, I met a lot of people. I always worked two nights a week, night shift. And that's about all the people you saw, except for the people on whatever floor you were relieving. I made a lot of friends picketing. It's a heck of a way to have to do it, but we did.

Hazel Lehtinen, Operating Room nurse, AGNA picket captain:

I don't feel it's right for any nurse to be down here by herself, regardless of whether it's male or female. At the beginning of the strike we didn't have too much of a problem because we weren't working and we did have more help. But most of us are nɔw working.

I'm the co-chairman of the plcket committee and we set up the pickets, so they usually call me if they do have a problem with picketing. I have been called in the middle of the night, well not in the middle of the night, about 1 A.M., to come down to stay with somebody... I just don't feel it's right to have anybody down here by themselves, at least after dark. So that's why my husband thinks that I'm down here all the time, that I'm the only one whose doing anything. And it has made a little bone of contention so we don't talk about It at home too much.

The strike is top-most in my mind and has been for the past 14 months. I have a great deal of difficulty getting myself to think about other things because there's always—the strike is there. It's not going to go away. I try to forget about It. I try to spend a day at home doIng nothing and not even thinking about what's going on down here. It's almost impossible. It's that much a part of my life.

Mary Runyan, Intensive Care Unit nurse, AGNA president:

We're going to continue; we're not giving up. › We have given on every single major issue that there was to give and it's not a very big thing to ask for your jobs back. And they don't want to give us our old jobs and, by God; that's too far to go—we're not going to go that far.

HONK IF YOU SUPPORT US!

STO

October, 1981/What She Wants/Page 9