Hospital administrators claim good faith progress with union,
but replacement workers stand by pending the likely strike of 190
Saint Louise employees who want louder voices and better job
security.
The age-old story of worker versus boss played out this afternoon at Saint Louise Regional Hospital, and a strike seems likely even though administrators say they have compromised in good faith with the upset union.
“Everybody’s pissed,” Ernest Gonzales, a local steward for the SEIU United Healthcare Workers union, said this afternoon outside the hospital cafeteria. He sat at a white plastic table with fellow steward, Laquita Centeno, collecting ballots from the local chapter’s membership to see if the group will strike next month and risk a four-day lock-out. The 93-bed hospital has vowed to hire replacement workers if this happens.
“They’re threatening us and trying to intimidate us,” Gonzales said about 2 p.m., when 79 of the union’s 190 certified nursing assistants, lab technicians, food service workers and hospital clerks had voted.
“Most of them have been pro-strike,” Gonzales said of the union members who, among other things, have demanded a stronger voice in quality care, increased job security and insurance benefits and the ability to have a third party arbitrator break stalled negotiations.
During the latest round of talks last week, the hospital agreed to some of these demands, but union members called it a ruse: The administration weakened current contract language on job security and arbitration going into the first round of negotiations last March – before the union members’ contracts expired April 30 – and has since restored that language and called it progress, Gonzales and others said. To boot, last week the administration introduced a so-called “Managers’ Rights Clause” that Gonzales said will essentially give the bosses carte blanche to bar third parties from negotiations, stymie the voices of lower-level employees and cancel an employee’s shift at the last minute instead of the standard two-hour fair warning that was restored during the last bargaining session.
“My biggest issue is the manager’s rights clause because it basically makes our contracts obsolete,” Kristi Murillo, an Emergency Rooms registrar, said at the ballot table. “They like to make all the decisions up there, but they never step foot out here on this floor.”
“It’s insulting,” Gonzales added.
But hospital CEO Joanne Allen and COO Carol Furgurson see it differently. The two women said negotiations have come a long way since March and that the union misunderstands the basic practicality of the manager’s clause.
“We think we’ve made significant progress and have exercised good faith,” Allen said.
“We have taken our proposals off the table, so I am surprised to hear that (the union) thinks we’re not progressing enough,” Furgurson said.
As far as the manager’s clause, the two dismissed the idea that it was controversial, certainly not a hoodwink – what Gonzales agreed was the equivalent of taking two dimes and a nickel away form the union and then giving it a quarter.
“That’s almost accusing us of being deceptive,” Allen said. “We have a very good relationship with our associates, so I am surprised they would think that.”
Furgurson agreed and added that instead of giving administrators absolute power, the clause allows for quick, pragmatic decisions – such as implementing a new computer system – and other hospitals have similar arrangements.
“Negotiating is a two-way street,” Furgurson said. “We need to manage our business and make decisions we have the right to make,” Furgurson said, adding that those who make the decisions often incorporate union opinions. The hospital also has a committee for employees to broach ideas and issues to management, Furgurson added.
“And I have an open door policy. Anybody has the opportunity to come in to my office,” Allen said, gesturing toward her open door.
But if administrators actually listened to employees, a strike would not loom on the horizon, union members said.
“I’ve never even seen the CEO and wouldn’t recognize her, not even if she walked right in front of me, and I’ve been here for 18 years,” Centeno, a clerk and one of the union stewards, said back at the ballot table.
Murillo worried that her and her colleagues’ voices will be even harder to hear if the manager’s clause further insulates the bosses from the workers, she said.
“When you have one (certified nurse’s assistant) working at night taking care of 30 patients, that’s not quality care – It’s not like these patients aren’t sick at night,” Murillo said.
If a strike does occur, it will likely span beyond Gilroy.
Saint Louise belongs to the Daughters of Charity Health System out of Los Altos Hills, which has a total of six medical centers throughout California, according to it Web site. The United Healthcare Workers unions at five of those locations – including Saint Louise – also held votes this afternoon, and the union chapters will tally their results this evening and confer later this week before the next round of negotiations with administrators Aug. 13 and 14 in Los Angeles. A strike requires a 10 day notice, so if the five mini unions, with more than 2,400 members, agree to strike together or separately, any protest will probably come after the next sit-down with administrators, Gonzales said, “out of courtesy.”
Another sticking point for the union appeared on a green flyer – the physical posting of which is another contractual stipulation – that boasted of the hospital’s $46 million so-called “profit” between July 1, 2006, and June 30, 2007. But Furgurson and Allen said that money is for all of the nonprofit Daughters’ hospitals, and $36 million of that belongs to investments that have since declined in the down economy. The remaining $10 million pays off debt bonds for the construction of Saint Louise and the other hospitals’ responsibilities, they said.
Finances aside, union members predicted August will see the same stalemate.
Earlier this month, the union held an informational picket to air the same grievances they did today†, “but that didn’t do any good, so now we’re doing this,” Gonzales said with a nod toward the ballot box.
“We’re ready,” Centeno said.
