82.1 F
San Fernando
Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Nurses Gain Momentum, Influence

It has been a busy year for labor relations at the greater San Fernando Valley’s hospitals. New labor contracts were signed at a handful of the area’s hospitals and negotiations are currently underway for most of the rest. The contracts are some of the first reached by the newly re-energized SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West, an increasingly powerful union that represents some 140,000 members including nurses, technicians and service workers, netting pay increases of 7 percent a year and 40 percent over the life of the contract in some cases, along with improved pension, medical and dental benefits and more stringent staffing requirements. Dealing with organized labor is a challenge for almost any industry. But with a nursing shortage, declining reimbursement rates and the mounting costs of treating the uninsured, union negotiations have proven particularly irksome for some hospitals. “Well over 62 percent of our costs are in labor costs,” said Jim Lott, executive vice president for the Hospital Association of Southern California, a hospital trade group. “And unfortunately for the hospitals, the allied health professions almost all of them are in extremely short supply. So that places the advantage in union’s hands as they negotiate a contract.” While the union may have the upper hand at the bargaining table, it is difficult to know whether the details of the contracts signed reflect the union’s negotiating prowess or the sheer labor shortage. For their part, the SEIU does not dwell on the wage increases won. The union says that its focus has been on providing a safe environment for its workers and for patients and giving a voice in the management of care to those who are directly charged with providing it. “Healthcare workers don’t go into this line of work for the money,” said Sal Rosselli, president of SEIU Healthcare Workers-West. “They go into it because they want to provide service. So our relationship with the employer needs to be one to accomplish these common goals.” That may be more true for some hospitals than others. At non-profits such as Kaiser Permanente and Catholic Healthcare West’s Northridge Hospital Medical Center, where the focus is on community benefits, negotiations have tended to proceed without incident. But even not-for-profit Antelope Valley Hospital has been the focus of union demonstrations, and the activism has escalated further where for profit hospitals are concerned. Over the past year, members of the SEIU have staged demonstrations at Health Care of America’s West Hills Hospital & Medical Center and Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center protesting working conditions. In other states, the SEIU has also played a role in several lawsuits filed against hospitals alleging that they colluded to keep nurses’ pay artificially low. At Antelope Valley Hospital, the demonstration revolved around demands for pay raises that arose from a 5 percent pay hike the hospital gave to some of its other workers. The protest occurred as the hospital and union were negotiating a new contract, and the union claimed the hospital was unresponsive to its demand for pay raises. Officials at Antelope Valley Hospital responded that they were not dragging their feet, but simply could not decide on a pay proposal separate from the full package of wages and benefits and no such package had yet been offered. “No one is arguing that an increase would not be forthcoming, but it’s all subject to the negotiating process,” said John Sullivan, vice president of human resources at Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster. “We asked if they would bring forward the other parts of the economic package. We have no idea what they will be asking for in terms of pension, life insurance or other components.” Executives quiet Officials at many of the hospitals declined to talk to the Business Journal for this story. Those at Providence Health Systems’ Providence St. Joseph Medical Center, which is just beginning contract negotiations, Tenet Healthcare Corp.’s Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center and Northridge Hospital Medical Center did not return phone calls. Jim Sherman, president and CEO of Los Robles, said through a spokesperson that the hospital did not wish to comment while it was in negotiations. Beverly Gilmore, president and CEO of West Hills Hospital, said through a spokeswoman that the hospital’s contract had been ratified and West Hills had no further comment. But it is clear to some that the SEIU has garnered considerable clout in recent years, putting the management of at least some of these hospitals somewhere between a rock and a hard place. It’s one thing for the auto industry to decry union tactics and demands; quite another for hospital administration to respond to a labor union’s call for “patients over profits,” as the SEIU has sometimes characterized its efforts, when there are literally lives at stake. Before a merger that occurred in January, 2005, the Southern California chapters of the SEIU numbered 30,000 members. The merger brought the size of the local to 140,000. It allowed the SEIU to negotiate with larger healthcare corporations on a statewide basis and heightened the union’s political efforts as well. “This bargaining is the first round of bargaining since this merger has taken place, and generally speaking, it’s been very, very successful,” Rosselli said. “Besides representing a lot of workers, because of our size and our focus we have tremendous clout in Sacramento. So being a statewide operation allows economy of scale and allows more efficiency of programs and strategic campaigns.” Even more important, the union’s growth potential is impressive. Healthcare workers are the fastest growing employment segment in the country, with 1.7 million jobs added since 2001, according to the U.S. Dept. of Labor. The agency projects that healthcare employment will increase by 27 percent by 2014, compared with a 14 percent projected increase for any other industry. While other unions have seen their memberships dwindle, the SEIU, the largest union in California, has added more than 800,000 members since 1996. Membership rise In L.A. County, the union’s membership numbers 30,370, up from 23,101 in just one year, according to statistics compiled by the Los Angeles Business Journal. With that heft, the SEIU is working aggressively toward getting a universal healthcare plan passed in Sacramento. “We’ve made it the priority in 2006, 2007 and 2008,” Rosselli said, “and we intend to accomplish it by ballot initiative if we have to.” Rosselli added that the union’s efforts have led to improved relations with hospitals with whom he said the SEIU shares common goals. But at least some say that the increased clout of the union has emboldened it in ways that hospitals are simply not accustomed to. “Their tactics in the last 10 years have been nothing short of what we experienced back during the old auto worker union days,” said Lott. “We’ve had unions storm our association offices in Sacramento, we’ve had threats, all kinds of things. But I think the biggest issue is once a hospital is unionized, it’s a very tenuous relationship and to speak about the effect could tip the balance in that relationship.”

Featured Articles

Related Articles