EAST LIVERPOOL, Ohio - Nurses at the East Liverpool City Hospital are hitting the picket line.

The nurses officially went on strike Saturday morning after ongoing contract talks came to a halt.

The Ohio Nurses Association says that 16 hours of negotiations on the final day of bargaining this week failed to produce a new contract agreement. The ONA also says hospital negotiators declined an offer to extend the current contract in exchange for a strike delay.

The union that represents 120 nurses at the hospital claims they cannot reach an agreement with the hospital over wages. The contract between the nurses union and the hospital expired June 1, but they've been negotiating on extensions since. Nurses claim surrounding hospitals pay around $5 more an hour to start.

Ashlee Severs, who's been a nurse at the hospital for 12 years, claims nurses at surrounding nursing homes make a couple more dollars an hour -- and at other local hospitals, nurses are getting $5 to $6 more an hour. Severs says this is causing a problem when it comes to keeping enough nurses at the hospital. 

"It's hard for nurses to come here when they're constantly being asked to work overtime and may feel guilty if they do not pick up those extra shifts," Severs said. "And sometimes they feel like if we had more staff, we would definitely be able to provide that quality patient care to our patients. It's not that we don't try to go above and beyond for each and every single patient, but with not having enough nurses, it makes that very, very hard to do."

East Liverpool City Hospital shared the offer they presented to the union on social media and called it extremely competitive and fair. The hospital says they had hoped the offer would be accepted to avoid a strike amid the pandemic. 


According to Severs, the hospital currently has temporary workers to make sure patient care is not impacted. She claims that at times, the temp workers are making three times more than regular nurses do on their base wages. 

The strike is expected to last three days, but the nurses say they're ready to negotiate now if the hospital is willing to come back to the negotiating table.