Several years ago a large Los Angeles hospital had a one day nursing shortage. It appears the hospital had decided to require its nursing staff to pay an additional $5.00 per nurse towards their healthcare expenses and the nurses weren't going to put up with it. When the hospital and nurses couldn't reach common ground on the issue the nurses decided to strike. Not willing to concede to the demands of the nursing staff, the hospital decided to bring in travel nurses to fill the temporary vacancies. My friend was a travel nurse in south Florida at the time when she received a phone call from her travel nurse agency. Her agent told her that if she were willing to catch an all expense paid first class flight to L.A., stay in a 5 star hotel and work a 14 hour shift she could make $4,000.00 for the shift. In stunned disbelief, she replied "Where do I sign up?"
I guess the liability related to having an inadequately staffed hospital was more than what the hospital had to spend on bringing in traveling nurses. I am not sure how the strike was resolved, but I can imagine that paying $4000.00 per shift for every travel nurse they had to bring in was motivation for the hospital to resolve its issues with the nurses. My friend was only required to stay in L.A. for one day and night.