KITTANNING - The statewide nurses unions have joined together to push for the passage of legislation that would ban mandatory overtime for health-care workers.

The Service Employees International Union, or SEIU's District 1199P, the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, or PASNAP, and Health Care-PSEA representatives held a rally at the edge of Armstrong County Memorial Hospital's property Tuesday in support of House Bill 1400.

The bill would ban mandatory overtime for nurses, nursing home aides and other health-care workers, said Mike Steep of the SEIU.

Mandatory overtime occurs when workers are required to stay on the job by employers once their shift is finished. It has occurred most often in facilities with nursing shortages.

Janine Yodanis, a PASNAP staff representative who works with the affiliated nurses at Butler Memorial Hospital, said the issue of mandatory overtime had been resolved at the Butler hospital some time ago.

"The contract between Butler's nurses and the hospital has already banned mandatory overtime," Yodanis said, adding that the nurses at Butler Memorial support the legislative ban because the overtime is "unsafe for nurses and patients."

Just before the rally, which included about 15 nurses from ACMH and other facilities, John Lewis, president and chief executive officer of the Armstrong hospital, pulled up in a car with other hospital administrators and asked Stepp what was going on.

Although members of the media and nurses had received information about the rally, the hospital had not. Stepp could not say why this omission occurred.

Terry Myers, president of the Armstrong Nurses Association, representing 225 ACMH registered nurses, which is affiliated with PASNAP, said SEIU had organized the rally, which she had not known about until that morning.

She denied the rally was being held in relation to the ongoing contract negotiations between Armstrong nurses and the hospital. The nurses have been without a contract since April.

Myers seemed surprised the hospital had not been notified of the rally and was left to explain to Lewis and other hospital officials that she had been asked to attend the rally, but had not organized it.

In a statement issued from the hospital Tuesday afternoon, Lewis pointed out the SEIU does not represent ACMH's nurses and "mandatory overtime has not been a stumbling block in the negotiations between this hospital and its nurses."

The rally is part of a statewide campaign for H.B. 1400 that started in Harrisburg a week ago. Union representatives will travel across the state and return to the Capital on Oct. 5.