Napolitano’s newest headache: “Outright bullying” and “patient deaths”
Josh Eidelson
Salon
Nov 20, 2013
Four months after former Obama Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano took the helm of the massive University of California system, unions representing 35,000 U.C. employees are staging a one-day strike over alleged illegal intimidation.
“She is the president, and she has the power to make change,” said Tim Thrush, a diagnostic stenographer and a vice president of the 21,000-member American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, which instigated the strike. “Ultimately it all comes back to her,” said Marco Rosales, a head steward in the 13,000-member United Auto Workers Local 2865, a student-worker union that is joining the strike.
At issue in today’s walkout is AFSCME’s allegation that U.C. management repeatedly violated state labor law in efforts to discourage the union’s members — patient care technical and service workers employed in medical centers – from mounting an unprecedented work stoppage last May. In charges filed with the government, AFSCME charges that administrators violated the state Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act through a battery of fear tactics: repeated statements by top officials promising or implying potential punishment for strikes; threatening postings and letters; and interrogations by individual managers.
“It’s a little disturbing that, you know, as we are fighting for patient safety in the workplace, and just being advocates for what’s right for the patients and their families, that management would act so aggressively to try to shut us up,” said AFSCME’s Thrush.
Thrush is among the AFSCME members who say they were personally intimidated by management in the lead-up to last May’s strike, before Napolitano took over for then-president Mark Yudof. He told Salon that his manager gave him a list of supplies to fetch from a supply room, and then “proceeded to pursue me” there, “blocking the door, and very aggressively began to interrogate me.” Thrush added, “Her hands were on her hips and she was roughly maybe two feet from my face, and was telling me that I was acting illegally, that I shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing, that I would be hurting patients and she didn’t think it was right that I told the other employees what their legal rights were when she was interrogating them.” He called the tactic “outright bullying,” and said he found it “pretty
The evidence presented by AFSCME also includes a message from U.C. labor relations director Peter Chester stating that “Service Unit employees at any location who engage in an unlawful sympathy strike face the possibility of disciplinary action,” and notices posted throughout the U.C. Davis Medical Center warning that “If an employee fails to report to work on one or more days between May 20 and 23, their absence will be considered unauthorized, they will not be paid, and they may be subject to disciplinary action.” (The union alleges the university espoused specious arguments that strikes would be illegal as a way to intimidate workers out of participating, and then withdrew its legal charges to that effect because they were bogus.)
Asked about the allegations, the strike and Napolitano’s role, the university referred Salon to a series of recent statements, one of which charged that “even the threat of an AFSCME strike has already affected patients,” including the rescheduling of elective surgeries, and said that it had “proposed several packages that showed significant movement in response to the union’s concerns and offered multi-year wage increases, affordable healthcare and quality pension benefits, which AFSCME rejected.” AFSCME countered that as in May, certain critical employees would voluntarily stay on the job under the union’s Patient Protection Task Force. In another statement, U.C. vice president Dwaine Duckett said that the university “asked AFSCME-represented employees if they planned to come to work, as is our a normal procedure, so we could adjust staffing as needed and ensure we could still care for patients during the strike.” AFSCME contends that the university violated several legal limitations on such conversations.
AFSCME and U.C. administrators have been in negotiations for over a year and a half. The university has blamed the lack of an agreement on AFSCME’s resistance to pension changes, while AFSCME has blamed the university’s rejection of proposals it says would improve patient safety. “We have made major concessions on many of our proposals, including wages and retirement benefits, in hopes that they would respond to our safety proposals,” said Thrush. “And they have not.” He cited AFSCME proposals regarding training and staffing. Noting fines assessed by government agencies, he charged, “There’s been patient deaths as a result of staffing issues and neglect of the safety” of patients.
Thrush offered some praise for Napolitano’s record to date, saying, “We find her to be much more open and receptive to working with the unions and our right to advocate with patients” and “we would hope that she would carry that new attitude on to her management group and get them to actually give us a workplace that’s safe and free of the intimidation tactics that they apply to quiet our voice.” The UAW’s Rosales was less optimistic, charging Napolitano has tried to “take the wind out of our sails” by publicly committing to invest funds that are “actually the amount of money that we would get in raises each year,” and thus “trying to co-opt the pressure that is being put on the university.” Rosales added, “I don’t think she’s done a good job of responding to these issues in earnest. It seems not very genuine.” The striking AFSCME and UAW locals are both helmed by leaders who ran on reform platforms and ousted incumbent union officials in bitter 2011 contests...
Showing posts with label strike. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strike. Show all posts
Friday, May 30, 2014
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Kaiser Permanente pharmacists consider going on strike
See also Kaiser often denies care to paying patients, but then doles out a bit of free care to get publicity and tax write-offs.
Kaiser Permanente pharmacists consider going on strike
By ALEJANDRO CANO
Fontana Herald News
April 13, 2014
Kaiser Permanente pharmacists, including those in the Fontana medical center, voted on April 4 to authorize the Guild for Professional Pharmacists committee to call a strike, if necessary, after negotiations reached no agreement.
According to the GFPP, which represents more than 1,400 pharmacists in Southern California, the employees "overwhelmingly" authorized the committee to call a strike after Kaiser’s bargaining team did not offer better health coverage plans and retirement plans for employees who work for less than full time.
“Kaiser has, so far, steadfastly refused to do so and, instead, has sought benefits cuts that would give pharmacists even lesser benefits both wile actively employed by Kaiser and after retirement," said Robin Borden, president of GFPP. “This is outrageous and our members won’t stand for it. While I know no one wants to strike -- least all of our members, for whom patients come first -- our members will not stand by and let Kaiser undermine our economic security, including our security after retirement."
Borden added that if the strike were to be called, it could involve all or some of the following Kaiser medical centers: Panorama City, Woodland Hills, Sunset, West Los Angeles, Baldwin Park, Bellflower, Harbor South Bay, Anaheim, Irvine, Ontario, Riverside, San Diego and Fontana.
Kaiser Permanente released a statement through Jennifer Resch-Silvestri, senior director of public affairs and brand communications in the San Bernardino County area, saying that the company's first priority is “always the safety and care of our members and patients” and that pharmacists are “valued members of our professional health care team."
“It is important to note that all Kaiser Permanente health services are open and operating as usual to serve our members who should continue to come to our facilities for their appointments, lab tests, scheduled procedures, and to see their doctors," said the statement. “With the good faith involvement of all concerned, we are optimistic that we will continue to make
progress toward a contract agreement."
Kaiser Permanente pharmacists consider going on strike
By ALEJANDRO CANO
Fontana Herald News
April 13, 2014
Kaiser Permanente pharmacists, including those in the Fontana medical center, voted on April 4 to authorize the Guild for Professional Pharmacists committee to call a strike, if necessary, after negotiations reached no agreement.
According to the GFPP, which represents more than 1,400 pharmacists in Southern California, the employees "overwhelmingly" authorized the committee to call a strike after Kaiser’s bargaining team did not offer better health coverage plans and retirement plans for employees who work for less than full time.
“Kaiser has, so far, steadfastly refused to do so and, instead, has sought benefits cuts that would give pharmacists even lesser benefits both wile actively employed by Kaiser and after retirement," said Robin Borden, president of GFPP. “This is outrageous and our members won’t stand for it. While I know no one wants to strike -- least all of our members, for whom patients come first -- our members will not stand by and let Kaiser undermine our economic security, including our security after retirement."
Borden added that if the strike were to be called, it could involve all or some of the following Kaiser medical centers: Panorama City, Woodland Hills, Sunset, West Los Angeles, Baldwin Park, Bellflower, Harbor South Bay, Anaheim, Irvine, Ontario, Riverside, San Diego and Fontana.
Kaiser Permanente released a statement through Jennifer Resch-Silvestri, senior director of public affairs and brand communications in the San Bernardino County area, saying that the company's first priority is “always the safety and care of our members and patients” and that pharmacists are “valued members of our professional health care team."
“It is important to note that all Kaiser Permanente health services are open and operating as usual to serve our members who should continue to come to our facilities for their appointments, lab tests, scheduled procedures, and to see their doctors," said the statement. “With the good faith involvement of all concerned, we are optimistic that we will continue to make
progress toward a contract agreement."
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Strikes at University of California hospitals statewide
Second strike in 6 months at UCLA Medical Center
Some UC Hospital Workers To Participate In 1-Day Strike Wednesday
CBS Local News
Nov 20, 2013
Hundreds of replacement workers will fill in for workers on strike. Dr. Tom Rosenthal, the chief medical officer ...
LAST MAY:
UCLA Chief Medical Officer Says Strike Is About Pensions, Not Patient Care
May 21, 2013
WESTWOOD (CBSLA.com) — As a two-day strike began Tuesday at five of the biggest medical centers in the University of California system, medical workers say they are protesting low staffing levels and patient care, while officials contend that the strike is about pensions.
Thousands of union medical workers walked picket lines throughout the state, including at UC Irvine and the Westwood and Santa Monica campuses of UCLA Medical Center. The strike officially began at 4a.m. Tuesday morning.
The strike comes after nearly a year of stalled contract negotiations with UC administrators. Striking workers said they are protesting a range of issues, including patient care and current staffing levels.
“I am here for my patients, I’m really concerned about their safety,” said radiation therapist Jenny Takakura, who administers radiation to cancer patients.
“We’ve had three therapists that have left, and each time they’ve left they have not been replaced,” she said.
UCLA Chief Medical Officer Dr. Tom Rosenthal said there are no issues with patient care...
[Maura Larkins comment: In fact, there are issues with patient care at UCLA, but they are hushed up. UCLA achieves this by working with other medical centers. UCLA hushes up other hospitals' problems, thus making sure other hospitals aren't motivated to improve, and keeping UCLA's reputation among the best. In fact, the grading is on a curve, so laziness and greed are allowed free rein.]
"The union representing patient care and service employees at UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica held a strike last Wednesday. Strikes took place at each of the University of California hospitals statewide on the same day."
UCLA-Santa Monica Hospital Workers Participate In Strike
Parimal M. Rohit
Santa Monica Mirror
Nov. 29, 2013
For the second time in almost six months, some workers from the Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center participated in a one-day strike last week.
The Nov. 20 strike, coordinated by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3299, took place at each of the University of California hospitals statewide, including the UCLA-run facilities both in Santa Monica and in Westwood.
All hospitals remained open, with elective surgeries directly impacted by the one-day walkout, according to news reports.
Similar to the two-day strike at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and other University of California hospitals in May, elective surgeries scheduled for Nov. 20 were reportedly rescheduled.
Union officials and the workers participating in the strike made demands for increased staffing, pay raises, and updated pension plans.
According to a statement released by UCLA Health, 325 replacement workers filled in for those who joined the picket line. Some administration staff members were “redeployed” to substitute for a variety of workers ranging from housekeeping staff to respiratory therapists and nursing assistants, according to UCLA Health.
“We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this strike may cause our patients and their families and friends,” UCLA Hospital System’s chief medical officer Dr. Tom Rosenthal said in a released statement prior to the strike. “However, every effort is being made to ensure that the hospitals and clinics that are part of the UCLA Health System remain open and continue to deliver the highest level of patient care.”
In all, 20 percent of elected surgeries scheduled during the one-day strike were rescheduled.
It was estimated the one-day strike would cost the entire UCLA Health System $2.5 million, including lost revenue and compensation for replacement workers.
AFSCME represents about 22,000 patient care and service employees. About 3,800 of those employees work for the UCLA Health System.
Despite the strike, UCLA Health said approximately 75 percent of AFSCME employees still showed up for work.
Also on the picket line alongside AFSCME Local 3299 members were representatives of other unions representing teaching assistants, lecturers, librarians, nurses, and healthcare and research employees at the University of California.
A similar strike took place May 21 and 22, when nearly 30,000 people participated in a two-day strike at University of California hospitals across the state. Members of the second labor union, University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE), joined the two-day strike in solidarity.
At Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center, more than 100 hospital employees lined Wilshire Boulevard and 16th Street during the two-day strike last May in an effort to increase staffing, update pension plans, and demand raises.
In September, AFSCME Local 3299 filed a complaint with the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) and alleged representatives on behalf of the Regents of the University of California engaged in intimidation practices against hospital workers during the two-day strike in May.
Specifically, the complaint charged the Regents of the University of California with threatening “adverse action against employees for participating in a strike,” listing three scenarios where a UC representative allegedly singled out an employee to be terminated or reprimanded if they took part in the two-day walkout in May.
The Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center is a 267-bed facility located at 16th Street and Wilshire Boulevard.
Strike news update at UCLA
By UCLA Newsroom
November 20, 2013
An estimated 230 UCLA service employees represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) did not report to work on Wednesday. Among them are cooks and food service workers, landscaping crews and custodial staff. (Staff at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center are separate.)
To minimize the impact on campus operations, supervisors prioritized tasks, performed some duties and utilized temporary replacement workers.
In dining facilities operated by Housing and Hospital Services, meals were simplified. Four facilities representing about 30 percent of the operation were closed for the day: Bruin Plate, Feast at Rieber, Hedrick Test Kitchen and Café 1919.
Custodial service in on-campus housing was prioritized around the cleaning of restrooms and removal of refuse from living areas.
Cleaning priorities for other campus buildings were focused on the highest-demand classrooms, restrooms, libraries. UCLA attempted to provide some minimum amount of service to all buildings on Wednesday.
Landscaping crews focused on trash removal and key campus areas.
Some UC Hospital Workers To Participate In 1-Day Strike Wednesday
CBS Local News
Nov 20, 2013
Hundreds of replacement workers will fill in for workers on strike. Dr. Tom Rosenthal, the chief medical officer ...
LAST MAY:
UCLA Chief Medical Officer Says Strike Is About Pensions, Not Patient Care
May 21, 2013
WESTWOOD (CBSLA.com) — As a two-day strike began Tuesday at five of the biggest medical centers in the University of California system, medical workers say they are protesting low staffing levels and patient care, while officials contend that the strike is about pensions.
Thousands of union medical workers walked picket lines throughout the state, including at UC Irvine and the Westwood and Santa Monica campuses of UCLA Medical Center. The strike officially began at 4a.m. Tuesday morning.
The strike comes after nearly a year of stalled contract negotiations with UC administrators. Striking workers said they are protesting a range of issues, including patient care and current staffing levels.
“I am here for my patients, I’m really concerned about their safety,” said radiation therapist Jenny Takakura, who administers radiation to cancer patients.
“We’ve had three therapists that have left, and each time they’ve left they have not been replaced,” she said.
UCLA Chief Medical Officer Dr. Tom Rosenthal said there are no issues with patient care...
[Maura Larkins comment: In fact, there are issues with patient care at UCLA, but they are hushed up. UCLA achieves this by working with other medical centers. UCLA hushes up other hospitals' problems, thus making sure other hospitals aren't motivated to improve, and keeping UCLA's reputation among the best. In fact, the grading is on a curve, so laziness and greed are allowed free rein.]
"The union representing patient care and service employees at UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica held a strike last Wednesday. Strikes took place at each of the University of California hospitals statewide on the same day."
UCLA-Santa Monica Hospital Workers Participate In Strike
Parimal M. Rohit
Santa Monica Mirror
Nov. 29, 2013
For the second time in almost six months, some workers from the Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center participated in a one-day strike last week.
The Nov. 20 strike, coordinated by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3299, took place at each of the University of California hospitals statewide, including the UCLA-run facilities both in Santa Monica and in Westwood.
All hospitals remained open, with elective surgeries directly impacted by the one-day walkout, according to news reports.
Similar to the two-day strike at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and other University of California hospitals in May, elective surgeries scheduled for Nov. 20 were reportedly rescheduled.
Union officials and the workers participating in the strike made demands for increased staffing, pay raises, and updated pension plans.
According to a statement released by UCLA Health, 325 replacement workers filled in for those who joined the picket line. Some administration staff members were “redeployed” to substitute for a variety of workers ranging from housekeeping staff to respiratory therapists and nursing assistants, according to UCLA Health.
“We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this strike may cause our patients and their families and friends,” UCLA Hospital System’s chief medical officer Dr. Tom Rosenthal said in a released statement prior to the strike. “However, every effort is being made to ensure that the hospitals and clinics that are part of the UCLA Health System remain open and continue to deliver the highest level of patient care.”
In all, 20 percent of elected surgeries scheduled during the one-day strike were rescheduled.
It was estimated the one-day strike would cost the entire UCLA Health System $2.5 million, including lost revenue and compensation for replacement workers.
AFSCME represents about 22,000 patient care and service employees. About 3,800 of those employees work for the UCLA Health System.
Despite the strike, UCLA Health said approximately 75 percent of AFSCME employees still showed up for work.
Also on the picket line alongside AFSCME Local 3299 members were representatives of other unions representing teaching assistants, lecturers, librarians, nurses, and healthcare and research employees at the University of California.
A similar strike took place May 21 and 22, when nearly 30,000 people participated in a two-day strike at University of California hospitals across the state. Members of the second labor union, University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE), joined the two-day strike in solidarity.
At Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center, more than 100 hospital employees lined Wilshire Boulevard and 16th Street during the two-day strike last May in an effort to increase staffing, update pension plans, and demand raises.
In September, AFSCME Local 3299 filed a complaint with the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) and alleged representatives on behalf of the Regents of the University of California engaged in intimidation practices against hospital workers during the two-day strike in May.
Specifically, the complaint charged the Regents of the University of California with threatening “adverse action against employees for participating in a strike,” listing three scenarios where a UC representative allegedly singled out an employee to be terminated or reprimanded if they took part in the two-day walkout in May.
The Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center is a 267-bed facility located at 16th Street and Wilshire Boulevard.
Strike news update at UCLA
By UCLA Newsroom
November 20, 2013
An estimated 230 UCLA service employees represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) did not report to work on Wednesday. Among them are cooks and food service workers, landscaping crews and custodial staff. (Staff at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center are separate.)
To minimize the impact on campus operations, supervisors prioritized tasks, performed some duties and utilized temporary replacement workers.
In dining facilities operated by Housing and Hospital Services, meals were simplified. Four facilities representing about 30 percent of the operation were closed for the day: Bruin Plate, Feast at Rieber, Hedrick Test Kitchen and Café 1919.
Custodial service in on-campus housing was prioritized around the cleaning of restrooms and removal of refuse from living areas.
Cleaning priorities for other campus buildings were focused on the highest-demand classrooms, restrooms, libraries. UCLA attempted to provide some minimum amount of service to all buildings on Wednesday.
Landscaping crews focused on trash removal and key campus areas.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Kaiser demands cuts in nursing staff and wages--despite $5.7 BILLION profit since 2009 (and so does Sutter Health San Francisco with $200,000,000 profit in 2012)
What's more important than consumer health? A 20% profit rate by a "non-profit".
Who helped punish nurses for forming a new union? Lawyer Emma Leheny, who is now head counsel of CTA, California Teachers Association (see below).
"The state’s huge hospital chains and health corporations are demanding concessions on very front: staffing levels, health and welfare, pensions, even wages, and this at a time when these corporations (all ‘non-profits’) have rarely been more profitable."
--Cal Winslow
An Alliance in Healthcare
By Cal Winslow
Zcommunications.org
January 05, 2013
Cal Winslow's ZSpace Page
In a giant step forward for California healthcare workers, two of the nation’s most militant unions have joined forces in the battle against Kaiser Permanente, the giant California based healthcare corporation. It is a battle of enormous proportion, one with implications for the entire industry, almost certainly beyond.
The alliance joins the California Nurses Association (CNA) with the new National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW); it was formally announced January 3, at CNA headquarters in Oakland, CA. It comes in the face of a set of interrelated challenges, each crucial, first of all of healthcare workers of course, but equally important for patients, for workers nationwide, for us all.
“This is an affiliation whose time has come,” NUHW president Sal Rosselli told the assembly of healthcare workers, union staff and members of the press. “Employer attacks are on the rise, nowhere more so than at Kaiser Permanente. NUHW members at Kaiser, with RN co-workers from CNA have already engaged in repeated statewide strikes to stand their ground against threatened reductions to wages, benefits and job protections that other unions at Kaiser have already agreed to in spite of four years of record profits for Kaiser.”
Other unions? Here, already, the plot thickens, for this alliance is not just to battle Kaiser; it is also to fight Kaiser’s incumbent union, the Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) California affiliate, United Healthcare Worker West (UHW). Zenei Cortez, RN, who chairs CNA’s Kaiser bargaining team, also CNA co-president, explained, “Uniting together, CNA and NUHW are taking a huge step forward in achieving our joint goal of upholding standards for workers and patients.” She made it quite clear, however, that the fight was also with SEIU’s UHW. “We will have to fight Dave Regan /UHW’s imported, thug extraordinaire president/ as well. We will fight Reagan and his cronies, it is disheartening to say that he has undermined our fight, but we will fight him every step of the way.”
It will be an uphill fight. California healthcare workers face an employer’s assault unprecedented in recent history. The state’s huge hospital chains and health corporations are demanding concessions on very front: staffing levels, health and welfare, pensions, even wages, and this at a time when these corporations (all ‘non-profits’) have rarely been more profitable. Kaiser, the country’s largest healthcare corporation, has made $5.7 billion since 2009; it pays its CEO George Halvorson $8 million a year (along with a dozen pensions). Kaiser has twenty top executives who receive annually more than $1 million each.
Sutter Health, another huge Northern California hospital chain, last year alone made 200 million dollars at its San Francisco complex, an astounding feat – as Bay Area labor writer Carl Finamore points out, it presents a profit rate of 20%, far above industry averages. In the past year Sutter RNs have repeatedly struck, defying demand’s for concessions, most recently December 24. Sutter, like Kaiser, sits on huge reserves...
California’s Health Care Wars
Counterpunch
by CAL WINSLOW
June 19, 2012
California’s healthcare workers’ wars continue, in the streets, in collective bargaining and in the courts, at a level of conflict not often matched in the US today. More, in these California conflicts, healthcare workers and their unions are as often as not on the offensive.
The new National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) has struck the huge healthcare chain Kaiser Permanente four times now in the past year, twice with support from California Nurses Association (CNA-NNU) RNs. These two walk-outs (in September 2011 and January 2012), involving 20,000 strikers plus each, rank as the largest but one (the Verizon strike) on the table of recent strikes. At the same time, this spring, the NUHW has won first contracts – with wage increases and no concessions – at hospitals including Keck Medical Center, University of Southern California; Sutter Health’s California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco; Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital; the Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital; and Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo.
At Kaiser, NUHW members are refusing to accept demands in deliberately stalled negotiations for concessions by a (non-profit?) corporation that “profited” $2.1 billion last year and pays its CEO George Halvorson $9 million annually (eight pension plans thrown in). And they are doing this while the rival Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has caved in to Kaiser yet again, this time signing a backroom deal that includes concessions demanded by Kaiser in particular in healthcare benefits. The union has agreed to a “Wellness Program” that commits members to (among other things) “holding down the costs of care at KP” and “enhancing the effectiveness and productivity of the organization” –an agreement that sets a very dangerous precedent for unions in California and a primary reason the Kaiser nurses have already been out – in solidarity strikes, supporting NUHW – twice. All this comes as NUHW members prepare for the upcoming rerun of the big Kaiser election (43,000 service and technical workers) of 2010 – the results of that election, won by SEIU in collusion with Kaiser, having been thrown out by an NLRB judge, based on evidence of widespread misconduct by SEIU.
At the same time, NUHW’s fight with SEIU has gone through another round in the courts. On Wednesday, June 13, in a San Francisco courtroom packed with NUHW members and supporters, NUHW lawyers presented oral arguments in the appeal of sixteen former United Healthcare Workers West (UHW) elected officers and leaders and the NUHW. They appealed damages awarded in the 2010 civil suit brought by the SEIU.
The 2010 San Francisco civil case was a sordid episode, another low in SEIU’s most recent low road adventures. SEIU, to the surprise of few, had trusteed its militant, progressive, 150,000 member California local, UHW.
SEIU seized the assets of UHW, fired its officers, removed its elected executive board and purged its stewards. Not content with trusteeship, SEIU was determined, in the words of its then vice president, “Wall Street” Dave Regan, now UHW president, “to drive a stake through the heart” of the new union, and, more, to see that the former, elected, UHW leaders and staff would “never again work in the labor movement.”
SEIU’s goal, then, was not just to wreck UHW (which it now has done), but to punish its leaders and staff. In the extraordinary trial in Federal Court, 28 NUHW leaders were sued for “damages” – SEIU, in a civil lawsuit, demanded of the defendants $25 million. It was astonishing, an assault on a group of working class organizers, all the more vicious given lifestyles of SEIU’s top leaders (Regan: salary $300,000 plus), not to mention their millionaire lawyers. It charged that these people, all union men and women, had “conspired” (for “personal power and profit”) – for years and all on “company” time – to leave SEIU and found a new union. It claimed they were responsible for an array of alleged offences including alleged illegal actions. They were charged with “theft, violence, and sabotage;” they “left contacts open,” “neglected grievances,” were guilty of “fiduciary malfeasance.”
But all these were dropped, and the pursuit of damages was reduced to $4 million. The case essentially came down to the charge that the UHW leaders were working – for two or three weeks in January, 2009 – against SEIU while still on the payroll. The judge, William Alsup, clearly agreed and the he instructed the jury to fix awards accordingly.
The jury – which included not a single union member – found against sixteen of the defendants, all former UHW leaders and held them liable for $725,000. NUHW was also found liable for $725,000, though this too was extraordinary; NUHW had no “fiduciary duty” to SEIU and did not exist in the weeks at issue.
$1.5 million, nevertheless, was awarded, a far cry from the $25 million first demanded, but cruel punishment for sixteen working men and women.
The appeal was argued before a three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Oakland attorney Dan Siegel contested the awards in the 2010 trial. Siegel challenged the basis for these findings, focusing on the alleged “fiduciary malfeasance.” –the charge that the UHW leaders had defied “fiduciary obligations” to SEIU leadership. In addition, he argued that the judge had erred in his instructions to the jury. In the 2010 trial, Alsup had repeatedly hectored the jurors, explaining at one point that this case – this conflict between a national union and its members in a local – was analogous to a dispute between the Bank of America and a branch office. A sort of corporate affair, an internal conflict within a corporation. He prohibited any discussion of any of the issues in the dispute within SEIU. No one on the jury was a union member.
Siegel insisted that the then elected officers and leaders of UHW had the right to contest the trusteeship, including the right to oppose the SEIU national leadership’s forced transfer of 65,000 long-term care workers from UHW to another local California, the key issue at the time, the one that ultimately was decisive in SEIU’s case for the trusteeship. The then UHW leadership had insisted that these workers had the right to decide the local of their choice – including the right to vote on the transfer.
Siegel argued that these officers’ responsibilities, then, were not simply to the SEIU‘s national leadership, led at the time by Andy Stern, but also to the members of UHW (including the 65,000), the people who had elected them, who determined the local union’s policies and paid the bills. Indeed they had an obligation to abide by the member’s decisions.
He contended that this fact invalidated the award of damages – these officers and leaders, even as SEIU members, had every right to explain to the local union’s members what rights they had in the weeks between to decision to transfer the 65,000 and, three weeks later, the imposition of the trusteeship when they were all summarily fired.
They were exercising protected speech, free speech, Siegel argued, when they organized meetings to inform UHW members of these rights and choices – including their right to dissent, to decertify, even the right to form a new union. SEIU lawyers had responded that the UHW leaders had no such rights and the case was essentially reduced to charge that the UHW leaders were working against SEIU while still on the payroll.
Siegel also argued that there were larger issues, issues just as important in the long run. What were the responsibilities of local union officers, not just to national leaders but to their members, again, the workers who elected them, set policy, etc., in particular when these members were in disagreement with national policies?
SEIU lawyer, Leon Dayan, repeated that there was a long-term conspiracy, something the jury had not found in 2010, and argued that the duties of the UHW officers and staff to the national and the local were one and the same – hence asserting that the elected local union officers and leaders were essentially no more than an administrative arm of the national union.
Speaking after the hearing, Siegel said the outcome was important for two reasons, first “to remove these entirely unfair judgments, still hanging over the heads of the sixteen defendants.” In this he said he was optimistic.
Second, on the larger issues, he said he was worried that the case raised issues that could prove “very dangerous for union activists. It took a law – Landrum Griffin Act, 1959 – in part designed to protect rank-and-file workers, and turned it on its head, using it as a vehicle for payback against dissenting local union officers and members.”
Back to the streets. At the same time these workers were in court – fighting for the right to have a union, one of their own choosing – nurses at Sutter Health were on strike at ten northern California hospitals. Their walkout, the fourth strike at Sutter since September, came as union officials and Sutter management continued to clash over sick leave, retirement benefits, health care payments, patient care conditions and other issues.
“Nurses at Sutter facilities are facing an unprecedented attack on their practice the scope of which we have not seen in over 20 years,” said Zenei Cortez, co-president of CNA/NNU. “Nurses everywhere are unifying to resist Sutter’s policies of unprecedented cuts in vital patient services for our communities and deterioration of patient care standards in our hospitals.”
The strike affected 4,400 RNs , as well as hundreds of respiratory, X-ray and other technicians at three Alta Bates Summit Medical Center facilities in Berkeley and Oakland, Mills-Peninsula Health Services hospitals in Burlingame and San Mateo, Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, San Leandro Hospital, Sutter Delta in Antioch, Sutter Solano in Vallejo, Novato Community Hospital.
“We don’t believe that Sutter needs to be demanding these onerous and unwarranted cuts from nurses because they are an extremely profitable operation that operates as what I call J.P. Morgan West,” said a California Nurses Association spokesperson. Sutter Health has made over $4.2 billion in profits since 2005, according to CNA. “They’re making decisions on what provides the best return for their shareholders, not for patient care,” he said.
Following the San Francisco hearing, a delegation of NUHW members, clad in red tee-shirts, headed for a noon rally across the Bay at Alta-Bates Summit. June, of course, has not been a good month for labor in the US, particularly in Wisconsin where the electoral turn into a (predictable) catastrophe. It’s far from all over, however. The fight-back continues, including here, in California’s booming healthcare industry.
Cal Winslow is the author of Labor’s Civil War in California, PM Press, 2012 (second edition, revised and expanded), an editor of Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt From Below during the Long Seventies (Verso, 2010), and an editor of West of Eden, Communes and Utopia in Northern California (PM Press, 2012). He is a Fellow at UC Berkeley, Director of the Mendocino Institute and associated with the Bay Area collective, Retort. He can be reached at cwinslow@berkeley.edu
TEACHERS versus NURSES???? See who was on the SEIU team!
Head Counsel Emma Leheny, the real decision-maker for California Teachers Association?
CTA head counsel Emma Leheny represented the union that caved in to Kaiser, SEIU, allowing cuts for nurses, and affirming the power of union officials over their members. Leheny is exactly the type of lawyer that CTA's corrupt officials like to have.
SEIU v. NUHW
Click to see entire decision affirming lower court judgment
FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
No. 09-15855
D.C. No. 3:09-cv-00404-WHA
SERVICE EMPLOYEES INTERNATIONAL
UNION; DAVID REGAN; ELISEO
MEDINA, as Trustees for SEIU
United Healthcare Workers West
and fiduciaries of the SEIU United
Healthcare WorkersWest and
Joint Employer Education Fund;
SEIU UNITED HEALTHCARE
WORKERSWEST, an unincorporated
association and fiduciary of the
SEIU United Healthcare Workers
West and Joint Employer
Education Fund; REBECCA COLLINS,
as a participant in the SEIU
United Healthcare WorkersWest
and Joint Employer Education
Fund,
Plaintiffs-Appellees,
OPINION v.
NATIONAL UNION OF HEALTHCARE
WORKERS; JOHN BORSOS; AARON
BRICKMAN; GAIL BUHLER; WILL
CLAYTON; JOAN EMSLIE; GLENN
GOLDSTEIN; MARK KIPFER; GABRIEL
KRISTAL; PAUL KUMAR; BARBARA
LEWIS; FREJA NELSON; FRED
SEAVEY; IAN SELDEN; SAL ROSSELLI;
JOHN VELLARDITA; PHYLLIS
WILLETT,
Defendants-Appellants.
______________________________
SEIU v. NATIONAL UNION OF HEALTHCARE
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California
William H. Alsup, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted
January 14, 2010--San Francisco, California
Filed March 15, 2010
Before: Myron H. Bright,* Michael Daly Hawkins, and
Milan D. Smith, Jr., Circuit Judges.
Opinion by Judge Bright
*The Honorable Myron H. Bright, Senior United States Circuit Judge for the Eighth Circuit, sitting by designation.
______________________________
SEIU v. NATIONAL UNION OF HEALTHCARE
COUNSEL
Jeffrey B. Demain (argued), Stephen P. Berzon, Peter D.
Nussbaum, Jonathan Weissglass, San Francisco, California,
Robert M. Weinberg, Leon Dayan, Washington, DC, Glenn
Rothner, and Emma Leheny, Pasadena, California, for the
plaintiffs-appellees.
Daniel Siegel (argued), Jose Luis Fuentes, and Dean Royer,
Oakland, California, for the defendants-appellants.
Who helped punish nurses for forming a new union? Lawyer Emma Leheny, who is now head counsel of CTA, California Teachers Association (see below)."The state’s huge hospital chains and health corporations are demanding concessions on very front: staffing levels, health and welfare, pensions, even wages, and this at a time when these corporations (all ‘non-profits’) have rarely been more profitable."
--Cal Winslow
An Alliance in Healthcare
By Cal Winslow
Zcommunications.org
January 05, 2013
Cal Winslow's ZSpace Page
In a giant step forward for California healthcare workers, two of the nation’s most militant unions have joined forces in the battle against Kaiser Permanente, the giant California based healthcare corporation. It is a battle of enormous proportion, one with implications for the entire industry, almost certainly beyond.
The alliance joins the California Nurses Association (CNA) with the new National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW); it was formally announced January 3, at CNA headquarters in Oakland, CA. It comes in the face of a set of interrelated challenges, each crucial, first of all of healthcare workers of course, but equally important for patients, for workers nationwide, for us all.
“This is an affiliation whose time has come,” NUHW president Sal Rosselli told the assembly of healthcare workers, union staff and members of the press. “Employer attacks are on the rise, nowhere more so than at Kaiser Permanente. NUHW members at Kaiser, with RN co-workers from CNA have already engaged in repeated statewide strikes to stand their ground against threatened reductions to wages, benefits and job protections that other unions at Kaiser have already agreed to in spite of four years of record profits for Kaiser.”
Other unions? Here, already, the plot thickens, for this alliance is not just to battle Kaiser; it is also to fight Kaiser’s incumbent union, the Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) California affiliate, United Healthcare Worker West (UHW). Zenei Cortez, RN, who chairs CNA’s Kaiser bargaining team, also CNA co-president, explained, “Uniting together, CNA and NUHW are taking a huge step forward in achieving our joint goal of upholding standards for workers and patients.” She made it quite clear, however, that the fight was also with SEIU’s UHW. “We will have to fight Dave Regan /UHW’s imported, thug extraordinaire president/ as well. We will fight Reagan and his cronies, it is disheartening to say that he has undermined our fight, but we will fight him every step of the way.”
It will be an uphill fight. California healthcare workers face an employer’s assault unprecedented in recent history. The state’s huge hospital chains and health corporations are demanding concessions on very front: staffing levels, health and welfare, pensions, even wages, and this at a time when these corporations (all ‘non-profits’) have rarely been more profitable. Kaiser, the country’s largest healthcare corporation, has made $5.7 billion since 2009; it pays its CEO George Halvorson $8 million a year (along with a dozen pensions). Kaiser has twenty top executives who receive annually more than $1 million each.
Sutter Health, another huge Northern California hospital chain, last year alone made 200 million dollars at its San Francisco complex, an astounding feat – as Bay Area labor writer Carl Finamore points out, it presents a profit rate of 20%, far above industry averages. In the past year Sutter RNs have repeatedly struck, defying demand’s for concessions, most recently December 24. Sutter, like Kaiser, sits on huge reserves...
California’s Health Care Wars
Counterpunch
by CAL WINSLOW
June 19, 2012
California’s healthcare workers’ wars continue, in the streets, in collective bargaining and in the courts, at a level of conflict not often matched in the US today. More, in these California conflicts, healthcare workers and their unions are as often as not on the offensive.
The new National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) has struck the huge healthcare chain Kaiser Permanente four times now in the past year, twice with support from California Nurses Association (CNA-NNU) RNs. These two walk-outs (in September 2011 and January 2012), involving 20,000 strikers plus each, rank as the largest but one (the Verizon strike) on the table of recent strikes. At the same time, this spring, the NUHW has won first contracts – with wage increases and no concessions – at hospitals including Keck Medical Center, University of Southern California; Sutter Health’s California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco; Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital; the Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital; and Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo.
At Kaiser, NUHW members are refusing to accept demands in deliberately stalled negotiations for concessions by a (non-profit?) corporation that “profited” $2.1 billion last year and pays its CEO George Halvorson $9 million annually (eight pension plans thrown in). And they are doing this while the rival Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has caved in to Kaiser yet again, this time signing a backroom deal that includes concessions demanded by Kaiser in particular in healthcare benefits. The union has agreed to a “Wellness Program” that commits members to (among other things) “holding down the costs of care at KP” and “enhancing the effectiveness and productivity of the organization” –an agreement that sets a very dangerous precedent for unions in California and a primary reason the Kaiser nurses have already been out – in solidarity strikes, supporting NUHW – twice. All this comes as NUHW members prepare for the upcoming rerun of the big Kaiser election (43,000 service and technical workers) of 2010 – the results of that election, won by SEIU in collusion with Kaiser, having been thrown out by an NLRB judge, based on evidence of widespread misconduct by SEIU.
At the same time, NUHW’s fight with SEIU has gone through another round in the courts. On Wednesday, June 13, in a San Francisco courtroom packed with NUHW members and supporters, NUHW lawyers presented oral arguments in the appeal of sixteen former United Healthcare Workers West (UHW) elected officers and leaders and the NUHW. They appealed damages awarded in the 2010 civil suit brought by the SEIU.
The 2010 San Francisco civil case was a sordid episode, another low in SEIU’s most recent low road adventures. SEIU, to the surprise of few, had trusteed its militant, progressive, 150,000 member California local, UHW.
SEIU seized the assets of UHW, fired its officers, removed its elected executive board and purged its stewards. Not content with trusteeship, SEIU was determined, in the words of its then vice president, “Wall Street” Dave Regan, now UHW president, “to drive a stake through the heart” of the new union, and, more, to see that the former, elected, UHW leaders and staff would “never again work in the labor movement.”
SEIU’s goal, then, was not just to wreck UHW (which it now has done), but to punish its leaders and staff. In the extraordinary trial in Federal Court, 28 NUHW leaders were sued for “damages” – SEIU, in a civil lawsuit, demanded of the defendants $25 million. It was astonishing, an assault on a group of working class organizers, all the more vicious given lifestyles of SEIU’s top leaders (Regan: salary $300,000 plus), not to mention their millionaire lawyers. It charged that these people, all union men and women, had “conspired” (for “personal power and profit”) – for years and all on “company” time – to leave SEIU and found a new union. It claimed they were responsible for an array of alleged offences including alleged illegal actions. They were charged with “theft, violence, and sabotage;” they “left contacts open,” “neglected grievances,” were guilty of “fiduciary malfeasance.”
But all these were dropped, and the pursuit of damages was reduced to $4 million. The case essentially came down to the charge that the UHW leaders were working – for two or three weeks in January, 2009 – against SEIU while still on the payroll. The judge, William Alsup, clearly agreed and the he instructed the jury to fix awards accordingly.
The jury – which included not a single union member – found against sixteen of the defendants, all former UHW leaders and held them liable for $725,000. NUHW was also found liable for $725,000, though this too was extraordinary; NUHW had no “fiduciary duty” to SEIU and did not exist in the weeks at issue.
$1.5 million, nevertheless, was awarded, a far cry from the $25 million first demanded, but cruel punishment for sixteen working men and women.
The appeal was argued before a three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Oakland attorney Dan Siegel contested the awards in the 2010 trial. Siegel challenged the basis for these findings, focusing on the alleged “fiduciary malfeasance.” –the charge that the UHW leaders had defied “fiduciary obligations” to SEIU leadership. In addition, he argued that the judge had erred in his instructions to the jury. In the 2010 trial, Alsup had repeatedly hectored the jurors, explaining at one point that this case – this conflict between a national union and its members in a local – was analogous to a dispute between the Bank of America and a branch office. A sort of corporate affair, an internal conflict within a corporation. He prohibited any discussion of any of the issues in the dispute within SEIU. No one on the jury was a union member.
Siegel insisted that the then elected officers and leaders of UHW had the right to contest the trusteeship, including the right to oppose the SEIU national leadership’s forced transfer of 65,000 long-term care workers from UHW to another local California, the key issue at the time, the one that ultimately was decisive in SEIU’s case for the trusteeship. The then UHW leadership had insisted that these workers had the right to decide the local of their choice – including the right to vote on the transfer.
Siegel argued that these officers’ responsibilities, then, were not simply to the SEIU‘s national leadership, led at the time by Andy Stern, but also to the members of UHW (including the 65,000), the people who had elected them, who determined the local union’s policies and paid the bills. Indeed they had an obligation to abide by the member’s decisions.
He contended that this fact invalidated the award of damages – these officers and leaders, even as SEIU members, had every right to explain to the local union’s members what rights they had in the weeks between to decision to transfer the 65,000 and, three weeks later, the imposition of the trusteeship when they were all summarily fired.
They were exercising protected speech, free speech, Siegel argued, when they organized meetings to inform UHW members of these rights and choices – including their right to dissent, to decertify, even the right to form a new union. SEIU lawyers had responded that the UHW leaders had no such rights and the case was essentially reduced to charge that the UHW leaders were working against SEIU while still on the payroll.
Siegel also argued that there were larger issues, issues just as important in the long run. What were the responsibilities of local union officers, not just to national leaders but to their members, again, the workers who elected them, set policy, etc., in particular when these members were in disagreement with national policies?
SEIU lawyer, Leon Dayan, repeated that there was a long-term conspiracy, something the jury had not found in 2010, and argued that the duties of the UHW officers and staff to the national and the local were one and the same – hence asserting that the elected local union officers and leaders were essentially no more than an administrative arm of the national union.
Speaking after the hearing, Siegel said the outcome was important for two reasons, first “to remove these entirely unfair judgments, still hanging over the heads of the sixteen defendants.” In this he said he was optimistic.
Second, on the larger issues, he said he was worried that the case raised issues that could prove “very dangerous for union activists. It took a law – Landrum Griffin Act, 1959 – in part designed to protect rank-and-file workers, and turned it on its head, using it as a vehicle for payback against dissenting local union officers and members.”
Back to the streets. At the same time these workers were in court – fighting for the right to have a union, one of their own choosing – nurses at Sutter Health were on strike at ten northern California hospitals. Their walkout, the fourth strike at Sutter since September, came as union officials and Sutter management continued to clash over sick leave, retirement benefits, health care payments, patient care conditions and other issues.
“Nurses at Sutter facilities are facing an unprecedented attack on their practice the scope of which we have not seen in over 20 years,” said Zenei Cortez, co-president of CNA/NNU. “Nurses everywhere are unifying to resist Sutter’s policies of unprecedented cuts in vital patient services for our communities and deterioration of patient care standards in our hospitals.”
The strike affected 4,400 RNs , as well as hundreds of respiratory, X-ray and other technicians at three Alta Bates Summit Medical Center facilities in Berkeley and Oakland, Mills-Peninsula Health Services hospitals in Burlingame and San Mateo, Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, San Leandro Hospital, Sutter Delta in Antioch, Sutter Solano in Vallejo, Novato Community Hospital.
“We don’t believe that Sutter needs to be demanding these onerous and unwarranted cuts from nurses because they are an extremely profitable operation that operates as what I call J.P. Morgan West,” said a California Nurses Association spokesperson. Sutter Health has made over $4.2 billion in profits since 2005, according to CNA. “They’re making decisions on what provides the best return for their shareholders, not for patient care,” he said.
Following the San Francisco hearing, a delegation of NUHW members, clad in red tee-shirts, headed for a noon rally across the Bay at Alta-Bates Summit. June, of course, has not been a good month for labor in the US, particularly in Wisconsin where the electoral turn into a (predictable) catastrophe. It’s far from all over, however. The fight-back continues, including here, in California’s booming healthcare industry.
Cal Winslow is the author of Labor’s Civil War in California, PM Press, 2012 (second edition, revised and expanded), an editor of Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt From Below during the Long Seventies (Verso, 2010), and an editor of West of Eden, Communes and Utopia in Northern California (PM Press, 2012). He is a Fellow at UC Berkeley, Director of the Mendocino Institute and associated with the Bay Area collective, Retort. He can be reached at cwinslow@berkeley.edu
TEACHERS versus NURSES???? See who was on the SEIU team!
Head Counsel Emma Leheny, the real decision-maker for California Teachers Association?
CTA head counsel Emma Leheny represented the union that caved in to Kaiser, SEIU, allowing cuts for nurses, and affirming the power of union officials over their members. Leheny is exactly the type of lawyer that CTA's corrupt officials like to have.SEIU v. NUHW
Click to see entire decision affirming lower court judgment
FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
No. 09-15855
D.C. No. 3:09-cv-00404-WHA
SERVICE EMPLOYEES INTERNATIONAL
UNION; DAVID REGAN; ELISEO
MEDINA, as Trustees for SEIU
United Healthcare Workers West
and fiduciaries of the SEIU United
Healthcare WorkersWest and
Joint Employer Education Fund;
SEIU UNITED HEALTHCARE
WORKERSWEST, an unincorporated
association and fiduciary of the
SEIU United Healthcare Workers
West and Joint Employer
Education Fund; REBECCA COLLINS,
as a participant in the SEIU
United Healthcare WorkersWest
and Joint Employer Education
Fund,
Plaintiffs-Appellees,
OPINION v.
NATIONAL UNION OF HEALTHCARE
WORKERS; JOHN BORSOS; AARON
BRICKMAN; GAIL BUHLER; WILL
CLAYTON; JOAN EMSLIE; GLENN
GOLDSTEIN; MARK KIPFER; GABRIEL
KRISTAL; PAUL KUMAR; BARBARA
LEWIS; FREJA NELSON; FRED
SEAVEY; IAN SELDEN; SAL ROSSELLI;
JOHN VELLARDITA; PHYLLIS
WILLETT,
Defendants-Appellants.
______________________________
SEIU v. NATIONAL UNION OF HEALTHCARE
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California
William H. Alsup, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted
January 14, 2010--San Francisco, California
Filed March 15, 2010
Before: Myron H. Bright,* Michael Daly Hawkins, and
Milan D. Smith, Jr., Circuit Judges.
Opinion by Judge Bright
*The Honorable Myron H. Bright, Senior United States Circuit Judge for the Eighth Circuit, sitting by designation.
______________________________
SEIU v. NATIONAL UNION OF HEALTHCARE
COUNSEL
Jeffrey B. Demain (argued), Stephen P. Berzon, Peter D.
Nussbaum, Jonathan Weissglass, San Francisco, California,
Robert M. Weinberg, Leon Dayan, Washington, DC, Glenn
Rothner, and Emma Leheny, Pasadena, California, for the
plaintiffs-appellees.
Daniel Siegel (argued), Jose Luis Fuentes, and Dean Royer,
Oakland, California, for the defendants-appellants.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
200 San Diego Kaiser Workers Strike for Fourth Time
I am personally familiar with Mary Ann Barnes' level of honesty. She supported the actions described here.
200 Local Kaiser Workers Strike for Fourth Time
24-hour strike aims to protect health care and retirement benefits
By Lauren Steussy
Jan 31, 2012
NBCSanDiego
Over 200 Kaiser workers went on strike Tuesday.
Workers at Kaiser Permanente are lining up in front of facilities across California to bring awareness to contract disputes with Kaiser's mental health and optical employees.
Statewide, 4,000 National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) employees will strike for 24-hours Tuesday. It is expected to be one of the biggest strikes in Kaiser's history, since two other unions will also walk out.
The disputes center around proposed cuts to retirement and health care benefits.
Over 200 of those NUHW employees work in San Diego. It's the group's fourth walkout since contract negotiations began in 2010. The most recent one since Tuesday's was in September.
Workers on strike say Kaiser's disputes affect not only their own health care and benefits, but also patient care.
"We've worked hard to make Kaiser successful," said Sarah Eberst, a Lincensed Clinical Social Worker with NUHW, "but we don't want that to come at the cost of pateint care or at the cost of our own retirement benefits or healthcare."
In April, Kaiser sent an economic proposal back to the unions, which have not negotiated since, according to MaryAnn Barnes, Senior Vice President and Executive Director Health Plan and Hospital for Kaiser in San Diego.
"We're very disappointed, and we need to see movement in the negotiations," Barnes said. "We're willing to negotiate in good faith, but we are not getting the same kind of reaction from NUHW."
All Kaiser hospitals and medical offices are expected to remain open during the strike, with Kaiser relying on replacement workers and nurse managers for additional staffing. This is possible because a very small group of the workers are actually on strike today, Barnes said.
"When Kaiser is making billions of dollars of profit per year," Eberst said, "It's not okay to be cutting back on employees retirement and health care."
Source: 200 Local Kaiser Workers Strike for Fourth Time | NBC San Diego
200 Local Kaiser Workers Strike for Fourth Time
24-hour strike aims to protect health care and retirement benefits
By Lauren Steussy
Jan 31, 2012
NBCSanDiego
Over 200 Kaiser workers went on strike Tuesday.
Workers at Kaiser Permanente are lining up in front of facilities across California to bring awareness to contract disputes with Kaiser's mental health and optical employees.
Statewide, 4,000 National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) employees will strike for 24-hours Tuesday. It is expected to be one of the biggest strikes in Kaiser's history, since two other unions will also walk out.
The disputes center around proposed cuts to retirement and health care benefits.
Over 200 of those NUHW employees work in San Diego. It's the group's fourth walkout since contract negotiations began in 2010. The most recent one since Tuesday's was in September.
Workers on strike say Kaiser's disputes affect not only their own health care and benefits, but also patient care.
"We've worked hard to make Kaiser successful," said Sarah Eberst, a Lincensed Clinical Social Worker with NUHW, "but we don't want that to come at the cost of pateint care or at the cost of our own retirement benefits or healthcare."
In April, Kaiser sent an economic proposal back to the unions, which have not negotiated since, according to MaryAnn Barnes, Senior Vice President and Executive Director Health Plan and Hospital for Kaiser in San Diego.
"We're very disappointed, and we need to see movement in the negotiations," Barnes said. "We're willing to negotiate in good faith, but we are not getting the same kind of reaction from NUHW."
All Kaiser hospitals and medical offices are expected to remain open during the strike, with Kaiser relying on replacement workers and nurse managers for additional staffing. This is possible because a very small group of the workers are actually on strike today, Barnes said.
"When Kaiser is making billions of dollars of profit per year," Eberst said, "It's not okay to be cutting back on employees retirement and health care."
Source: 200 Local Kaiser Workers Strike for Fourth Time | NBC San Diego
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Kaiser doctors sue their nurses over CNA strike
I'm glad someone at Kaiser is standing up to unethical bosses.
Kaiser, docs sue nurses over walkout
San Francisco Business Times
by Chris Rauber, Reporter
November 18, 2011
UPDATE: Chuck Idelson, a spokesman for the Oakland-based California Nurses Association , didn't directly respond to the substance of Kaiser Permanente 's lawsuit in U.S. District Court. But he told the San Francisco Business Times late Friday that Kaiser allegedly is taking the step as part of plans for an East Coast expansion move, to New York, New Jersey and the Washington, D.C., area (where it already has a regional unit). "Kaiser has dreams of empire," Idelson said, and wants to fund its expansion on the backs of workers. He said that is CNA's only statement on the suit.
Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California hospital unit and medical group filed a federal lawsuit Thursday that would require the California Nurses Association to go to arbitration over its recent decision “to violate its contract by calling a strike," the health care system said Friday.
Kaiser is asking the U.S. District Court for Northern California to order the CNA into arbitration over what it called a “serious breach” of the union’s contract by a one-day, Northern California-wide strike against the nonprofit system Sept. 22 to 23.
Kaiser said the union’s contract, which went into effect Sept. 1, includes a “mutually agreed upon provision that prohibits work stoppages and strikes for the life of the three-year contract.”
The Oakland-based health care giant said it filed a grievance against the nurses’ union on Oct. 18, “using the dispute resolution process spelled out in the contract,” but that the union rejected the request Nov. 7, claiming the no-strike provision didn’t apply, because only CNA has a right to file a grievance. CNA said at the time it went out in sympathy with a short strike by the National Union of Health Care Workers, which walked out at a number of Kaiser and Sutter Health facilities.
Roughly one-third of the 17,000 CNA-represented RNs who work at Kaiser facilities in Northern California crossed picket lines and showed up at work during the late September work stoppage, according to Kaiser's Nov. 18 statement.
Kaiser sues California Nurses Association over strike
November 18, 2011
Kathy Robertson
Sacramento Business Journal
Kaiser Permanente has filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging the California Nurses Association violated a no-strike clause in its collective bargaining agreement when it called a statewide strike by Kaiser nurses in September.
Billed as the largest nurses’ strike in state history, CNA called a massive walkout Sept. 22-23 by as many as 22,700 nurses, including 17,000 at Kaiser, 5,000 at Sutter Health and 700 at Children’s Hospital in Oakland. Other workers at other unions joined the walkout, too.
CNA’s current contract with Kaiser — which went into effect Sept. 1 — includes a mutually agreed upon provision that prohibits work stoppages and strikes for the life of the three-year contract, Kaiser alleges in the lawsuit. The strike required Kaiser to hire hundreds of temporary nurses and additional staff, limit elective medical procedures and transfer critical care through special teams, all at considerable expense.
Kaiser filed a grievance against the union Oct. 18, requesting a discussion to address the issue using the dispute resolution process spelled out in the contract.
CNA rejected the request Nov. 7, claiming the no-strike provision does not apply to sympathy strikes and that only the union has the right to file a grievance under the contract, court documents allege.
Kaiser seeks a court order compelling the union to arbitrate Kaiser’s grievance.
CNA spokesman Chuck Idelson said the union has a strong history — known to Kaiser — of providing support for other unions.
Kaiser, docs sue nurses over walkout
San Francisco Business Times
by Chris Rauber, Reporter
November 18, 2011
UPDATE: Chuck Idelson, a spokesman for the Oakland-based California Nurses Association , didn't directly respond to the substance of Kaiser Permanente 's lawsuit in U.S. District Court. But he told the San Francisco Business Times late Friday that Kaiser allegedly is taking the step as part of plans for an East Coast expansion move, to New York, New Jersey and the Washington, D.C., area (where it already has a regional unit). "Kaiser has dreams of empire," Idelson said, and wants to fund its expansion on the backs of workers. He said that is CNA's only statement on the suit.
Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California hospital unit and medical group filed a federal lawsuit Thursday that would require the California Nurses Association to go to arbitration over its recent decision “to violate its contract by calling a strike," the health care system said Friday.
Kaiser is asking the U.S. District Court for Northern California to order the CNA into arbitration over what it called a “serious breach” of the union’s contract by a one-day, Northern California-wide strike against the nonprofit system Sept. 22 to 23.
Kaiser said the union’s contract, which went into effect Sept. 1, includes a “mutually agreed upon provision that prohibits work stoppages and strikes for the life of the three-year contract.”
The Oakland-based health care giant said it filed a grievance against the nurses’ union on Oct. 18, “using the dispute resolution process spelled out in the contract,” but that the union rejected the request Nov. 7, claiming the no-strike provision didn’t apply, because only CNA has a right to file a grievance. CNA said at the time it went out in sympathy with a short strike by the National Union of Health Care Workers, which walked out at a number of Kaiser and Sutter Health facilities.
Roughly one-third of the 17,000 CNA-represented RNs who work at Kaiser facilities in Northern California crossed picket lines and showed up at work during the late September work stoppage, according to Kaiser's Nov. 18 statement.
Kaiser sues California Nurses Association over strike
November 18, 2011
Kathy Robertson
Sacramento Business Journal
Kaiser Permanente has filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging the California Nurses Association violated a no-strike clause in its collective bargaining agreement when it called a statewide strike by Kaiser nurses in September.
Billed as the largest nurses’ strike in state history, CNA called a massive walkout Sept. 22-23 by as many as 22,700 nurses, including 17,000 at Kaiser, 5,000 at Sutter Health and 700 at Children’s Hospital in Oakland. Other workers at other unions joined the walkout, too.
CNA’s current contract with Kaiser — which went into effect Sept. 1 — includes a mutually agreed upon provision that prohibits work stoppages and strikes for the life of the three-year contract, Kaiser alleges in the lawsuit. The strike required Kaiser to hire hundreds of temporary nurses and additional staff, limit elective medical procedures and transfer critical care through special teams, all at considerable expense.
Kaiser filed a grievance against the union Oct. 18, requesting a discussion to address the issue using the dispute resolution process spelled out in the contract.
CNA rejected the request Nov. 7, claiming the no-strike provision does not apply to sympathy strikes and that only the union has the right to file a grievance under the contract, court documents allege.
Kaiser seeks a court order compelling the union to arbitrate Kaiser’s grievance.
CNA spokesman Chuck Idelson said the union has a strong history — known to Kaiser — of providing support for other unions.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Hospital plays labor hardball, locks out nurses, and patient dies
Nurses called a one-day strike, but the hospital locked them out for days.
Thousands of nurses return to work at Alta Bates
By Angela Woodall
Oakland Tribune
09/27/2011
Thousands of nurses returned to work Tuesday after a five-day labor dispute that turned deadly for one cancer patient.
The cloud of Judith Ming's death hung heavily over the returning staff at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, where the 66-year-old died Saturday morning after a dietary supplement apparently was introduced into her intravenous line.
The Alameda County Coroner's Office has not yet completed the autopsy on Ming, who suffered from ovarian cancer. The fill-in nurse who police said made the error was questioned and released Saturday. She is 23 years old and from Louisiana.
One Alta Bates Summit veteran nurse said she and her colleagues did not think highly of the 500 replacements provided by Alabama-based Advanced Clinical Employment Staffing, which the medical center relied on for five days when it locked out the regular nurses, who had declared a one-day strike Thursday.
The Alta Bates Summit nurse, who asked not to use her name because her husband works for a public agency, said her colleagues are concerned that the staffing firm sent inexperienced nurses. "It's such a sad situation," the nurse said. "I feel really bad for her."
The nurse said the replacements could not have had adequate training before taking on their responsibilities at the hospital because there was "no one here to train them" on the sophisticated equipment and computer programs now used in medical care, or show them where equipment,
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medications and other items are kept.
In addition, the replacement nurses had to work 12-hour shifts five days in a row. Usually, nurses are not required to work more than two to three 12-hour shifts at a time.
Standing outside the entrance to Alta Bates Summit in Oakland, hospital spokeswoman Carolyn Kemp said Tuesday that 40 percent of Alta Bates Summit's 1,800 staff nurses stayed on duty during the strike and worked side by side with the replacements. The fill-ins had experience in the area they were assigned and received an orientation the day before being deployed and again the day they began, according to Kemp.
"Everybody is a professional," she said.
The medical error is so basic that it has baffled nurses because the dietary supplement, Glucera, is labeled, should be taken orally or through a feeding tube and looks nothing like IV fluids. Ming may have had an abdominal feeding tube, but the two pieces of equipment do not fit with each other and look completely different.
An Advanced Staffing employee reached by telephone said the company plans to issue a statement soon but otherwise did not comment.
Advanced Staffing and Summit Medical Center were named as defendants in a 2006 lawsuit brought by the family of an 80-year-old woman who died because, according to the family, she did not receive oxygen. Advanced Staffing denied all allegations at the time but had provided the traveling nurse named in the suit. The lawsuit was settled in 2009. The nurses's license in California expired in January 2010, according to the California Board of Registered Nursing.
Advanced Clinical Employment Staffing, the employee said, required the hospital to sign a five-day contract. Only 500 of the 1,500 referred by Advanced Staffing were accepted, she added.
Kaiser Permanente, one of 30 hospitals affected by the strike, signed a one-day contract with American Mobile Healthcare and RNRx Medical Staffing Inc., according to the California Nurses Association. In all, 23,000 nurses in 30 hospitals went on strike.
Alta Bates Summit, like other California hospitals, routinely calls on replacement nurses to fill in for personnel on leave or on strike. They help bridge California's strict patient-to-nurse ratio requirement, the only one in the nation, which varies depending on illness, severity and complexity of required treatment.
Death of Oakland woman killed by nursing mistake prompts controversy, investigations
By Sean Maher and Jeanine Benca
Mercury News.com
09/26/2011
OAKLAND — The 66-year-old woman who died at a hospital after receiving care from a temporary replacement nurse was identified by the coroner's office Sunday as Oakland resident Judith Ming.
Ming's death reverberated both inside Alta Bates Summit Medical Center and out Sunday. Nursing union leaders painted her as the victim of a staff lockout that prompted the hospital to cut corners by hiring replacement nurses who weren't up to par. Hospital administrators, on the other hand, said the death was an "extraordinarily rare" but extremely serious tragedy, promising cooperation with multiple investigations and asking that the death not be used for political means in the two parties' ongoing contract battle.
The hospital had temporarily hired 500 replacement nurses to continue service when the California Nurses Association staged a one-day strike Thursday, but had signed them to a five-day contract, sending staff nurses who'd gone on strike home when they arrived for work Friday.
A cancer patient at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center since July, Ming died early Saturday morning a few hours after investigators say one of the replacement nurses, who'd come from Louisiana, administered a "nonprescribed dosage of medication."
"If I was taking care of that patient, it would not have happened at all," said Alicia Torres, an oncology nurse with 27 years of experience and one of those
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who went on strike Thursday. She said she works in the same unit where Ming died and that replacement nurses "are not familiar with the policies and procedures, or with the equipment, because equipment will vary from hospital to hospital. So they're thrown in there without the proper training."
Dr. Steve O'Brien, the hospital's chief medical officer, said the death was the most serious possible tragedy, but that the policy of using replacement nurses was not clearly to blame.
"One hundred percent of every aspect of the situation, we're looking at," he said. "This is a tragedy, a significant medial error. There is nothing more serious."
Asked if he was concerned about the legal ramifications of an apology the hospital issued Saturday, O'Brien said, "There are people who will later look at the legal issues. I'm glad that's not my job. My job is to make sure our patients get the safety and medical care they deserve."
As for using replacement nurses: "Everybody working in this facility is qualified to work here," O'Brien said. He said the hospital uses replacement nurses every day, and all of them meet or exceed California's professional standards, which he described as especially rigorous.
Bruce Fagel, a longtime California medical malpractice attorney who is also a licensed medical doctor, said having replacement or temporary nurses working in hospitals for extended periods increases the risk of medical mistakes that harm patients.
Since 2007, California hospitals have been required to inform the state Department of Public Health within 24 hours of so-called "never events" -- 28 medical errors deemed inexcusable by the National Quality Forum. The health department must then immediately launch an investigation, and if wrongdoing is determined, the hospital can be slapped with tens of thousands of dollars worth of fines.
Since the law was passed, the California Department of Public Health has collected $4.6 million in fines from hospitals for incidents resulting in patient death or very serious injury, said Fagel, a 30-year veteran malpractice attorney. Still, with no real means of enforcing hospitals to disclose incidents, many cases go unreported, he added.
Of the 50 or so malpractice cases resulting in death or catastrophic injury that his firm handles annually, Fagel estimates 10 percent involve errors made by a traveling, or temporary nurse.
"Traveling nurses get into trouble more frequently because they don't understand the system, who to access in terms of the chain-of-command," Fagel said. "When you have replacement nurses, especially in large numbers, nobody is there to supervise them, and these are people who don't work together regularly ... it's a setup for these types of problems where a medical error can lead to a patient's death."
Because there is no way for hospitals to screen every fill-in, they often rely on the registry to perform the screenings for them. The registries also arrange for the fill-in nurses to get licensed in whatever state they will be working.
At Alta Bates, backups work alongside staff nurses to make sure they get up to speed, O'Brien said.
He declined to name the firm with which the hospital contracts, but union leaders said they believe it to be Alabama-based Advanced Clinical Employment Staffing. Nobody answered the phone there Sunday, but the outgoing voice message said, "We are working on ... going to the California strike beginning Sept. 22..."
September 25, 2011
Patient died during Calif. nurse labor dispute
By JOHN S. MARSHALL
The Associated Press
...The nurses union planned a candlelight vigil at the hospital, with nurses calling on Sutter Health, the operator of Alta Bates, to end the lockout and for the state to investigate what union officials called "safety violations" in the patient's death.
About 23,000 nurses across California walked off the job Thursday in a one-day strike at 33 not-for-profit hospitals run by Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health and the independent Children's Hospital Oakland. They had planned to go back to work Friday, but were locked out when they tried to return to work at Sutter hospitals, according to union officials.
Sutter officials said they entered into contracts with replacement nurses that required they pay the replacement nurses for a minimum number of days.
"Once a strike is called, it would be financially irresponsible for hospitals to pay double to compensate both permanent staff and replacement workers," Sutter Health said earlier in the week.
The lockout was scheduled to end Tuesday.
Thousands of nurses return to work at Alta Bates
By Angela Woodall
Oakland Tribune
09/27/2011
Thousands of nurses returned to work Tuesday after a five-day labor dispute that turned deadly for one cancer patient.
The cloud of Judith Ming's death hung heavily over the returning staff at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, where the 66-year-old died Saturday morning after a dietary supplement apparently was introduced into her intravenous line.
The Alameda County Coroner's Office has not yet completed the autopsy on Ming, who suffered from ovarian cancer. The fill-in nurse who police said made the error was questioned and released Saturday. She is 23 years old and from Louisiana.
One Alta Bates Summit veteran nurse said she and her colleagues did not think highly of the 500 replacements provided by Alabama-based Advanced Clinical Employment Staffing, which the medical center relied on for five days when it locked out the regular nurses, who had declared a one-day strike Thursday.
The Alta Bates Summit nurse, who asked not to use her name because her husband works for a public agency, said her colleagues are concerned that the staffing firm sent inexperienced nurses. "It's such a sad situation," the nurse said. "I feel really bad for her."
The nurse said the replacements could not have had adequate training before taking on their responsibilities at the hospital because there was "no one here to train them" on the sophisticated equipment and computer programs now used in medical care, or show them where equipment,
Advertisement
medications and other items are kept.
In addition, the replacement nurses had to work 12-hour shifts five days in a row. Usually, nurses are not required to work more than two to three 12-hour shifts at a time.
Standing outside the entrance to Alta Bates Summit in Oakland, hospital spokeswoman Carolyn Kemp said Tuesday that 40 percent of Alta Bates Summit's 1,800 staff nurses stayed on duty during the strike and worked side by side with the replacements. The fill-ins had experience in the area they were assigned and received an orientation the day before being deployed and again the day they began, according to Kemp.
"Everybody is a professional," she said.
The medical error is so basic that it has baffled nurses because the dietary supplement, Glucera, is labeled, should be taken orally or through a feeding tube and looks nothing like IV fluids. Ming may have had an abdominal feeding tube, but the two pieces of equipment do not fit with each other and look completely different.
An Advanced Staffing employee reached by telephone said the company plans to issue a statement soon but otherwise did not comment.
Advanced Staffing and Summit Medical Center were named as defendants in a 2006 lawsuit brought by the family of an 80-year-old woman who died because, according to the family, she did not receive oxygen. Advanced Staffing denied all allegations at the time but had provided the traveling nurse named in the suit. The lawsuit was settled in 2009. The nurses's license in California expired in January 2010, according to the California Board of Registered Nursing.
Advanced Clinical Employment Staffing, the employee said, required the hospital to sign a five-day contract. Only 500 of the 1,500 referred by Advanced Staffing were accepted, she added.
Kaiser Permanente, one of 30 hospitals affected by the strike, signed a one-day contract with American Mobile Healthcare and RNRx Medical Staffing Inc., according to the California Nurses Association. In all, 23,000 nurses in 30 hospitals went on strike.
Alta Bates Summit, like other California hospitals, routinely calls on replacement nurses to fill in for personnel on leave or on strike. They help bridge California's strict patient-to-nurse ratio requirement, the only one in the nation, which varies depending on illness, severity and complexity of required treatment.
Death of Oakland woman killed by nursing mistake prompts controversy, investigations
By Sean Maher and Jeanine Benca
Mercury News.com
09/26/2011
OAKLAND — The 66-year-old woman who died at a hospital after receiving care from a temporary replacement nurse was identified by the coroner's office Sunday as Oakland resident Judith Ming.
Ming's death reverberated both inside Alta Bates Summit Medical Center and out Sunday. Nursing union leaders painted her as the victim of a staff lockout that prompted the hospital to cut corners by hiring replacement nurses who weren't up to par. Hospital administrators, on the other hand, said the death was an "extraordinarily rare" but extremely serious tragedy, promising cooperation with multiple investigations and asking that the death not be used for political means in the two parties' ongoing contract battle.
The hospital had temporarily hired 500 replacement nurses to continue service when the California Nurses Association staged a one-day strike Thursday, but had signed them to a five-day contract, sending staff nurses who'd gone on strike home when they arrived for work Friday.
A cancer patient at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center since July, Ming died early Saturday morning a few hours after investigators say one of the replacement nurses, who'd come from Louisiana, administered a "nonprescribed dosage of medication."
"If I was taking care of that patient, it would not have happened at all," said Alicia Torres, an oncology nurse with 27 years of experience and one of those
Advertisement
who went on strike Thursday. She said she works in the same unit where Ming died and that replacement nurses "are not familiar with the policies and procedures, or with the equipment, because equipment will vary from hospital to hospital. So they're thrown in there without the proper training."
Dr. Steve O'Brien, the hospital's chief medical officer, said the death was the most serious possible tragedy, but that the policy of using replacement nurses was not clearly to blame.
"One hundred percent of every aspect of the situation, we're looking at," he said. "This is a tragedy, a significant medial error. There is nothing more serious."
Asked if he was concerned about the legal ramifications of an apology the hospital issued Saturday, O'Brien said, "There are people who will later look at the legal issues. I'm glad that's not my job. My job is to make sure our patients get the safety and medical care they deserve."
As for using replacement nurses: "Everybody working in this facility is qualified to work here," O'Brien said. He said the hospital uses replacement nurses every day, and all of them meet or exceed California's professional standards, which he described as especially rigorous.
Bruce Fagel, a longtime California medical malpractice attorney who is also a licensed medical doctor, said having replacement or temporary nurses working in hospitals for extended periods increases the risk of medical mistakes that harm patients.
Since 2007, California hospitals have been required to inform the state Department of Public Health within 24 hours of so-called "never events" -- 28 medical errors deemed inexcusable by the National Quality Forum. The health department must then immediately launch an investigation, and if wrongdoing is determined, the hospital can be slapped with tens of thousands of dollars worth of fines.
Since the law was passed, the California Department of Public Health has collected $4.6 million in fines from hospitals for incidents resulting in patient death or very serious injury, said Fagel, a 30-year veteran malpractice attorney. Still, with no real means of enforcing hospitals to disclose incidents, many cases go unreported, he added.
Of the 50 or so malpractice cases resulting in death or catastrophic injury that his firm handles annually, Fagel estimates 10 percent involve errors made by a traveling, or temporary nurse.
"Traveling nurses get into trouble more frequently because they don't understand the system, who to access in terms of the chain-of-command," Fagel said. "When you have replacement nurses, especially in large numbers, nobody is there to supervise them, and these are people who don't work together regularly ... it's a setup for these types of problems where a medical error can lead to a patient's death."
Because there is no way for hospitals to screen every fill-in, they often rely on the registry to perform the screenings for them. The registries also arrange for the fill-in nurses to get licensed in whatever state they will be working.
At Alta Bates, backups work alongside staff nurses to make sure they get up to speed, O'Brien said.
He declined to name the firm with which the hospital contracts, but union leaders said they believe it to be Alabama-based Advanced Clinical Employment Staffing. Nobody answered the phone there Sunday, but the outgoing voice message said, "We are working on ... going to the California strike beginning Sept. 22..."
September 25, 2011
Patient died during Calif. nurse labor dispute
By JOHN S. MARSHALL
The Associated Press
...The nurses union planned a candlelight vigil at the hospital, with nurses calling on Sutter Health, the operator of Alta Bates, to end the lockout and for the state to investigate what union officials called "safety violations" in the patient's death.
About 23,000 nurses across California walked off the job Thursday in a one-day strike at 33 not-for-profit hospitals run by Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health and the independent Children's Hospital Oakland. They had planned to go back to work Friday, but were locked out when they tried to return to work at Sutter hospitals, according to union officials.
Sutter officials said they entered into contracts with replacement nurses that required they pay the replacement nurses for a minimum number of days.
"Once a strike is called, it would be financially irresponsible for hospitals to pay double to compensate both permanent staff and replacement workers," Sutter Health said earlier in the week.
The lockout was scheduled to end Tuesday.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Kaiser nurses strike in northern California: "Kaiser recorded a $1.6 billion profit for the first six months of 2011" but has inadequate staff
"The bottom line is we don't have enough staff," she said, adding that Kaiser recorded a $1.6 billion profit for the first six months of 2011. "With profits like these, Kaiser can provide staff to see patients in a timely and ethical manner.
"We helped Kaiser earn this money, we should be rewarded for it."
See related: patient dies during lockout of nurses.
See all Kaiser Permanente posts.
Sutter, Kaiser nurses go on strike
By Melissa Murphy
The Reporter (Vacaville)
09/23/2011
...Kaiser Permanente nurses -- who are represented by the California Nurses Association and have settled their own contract -- said they were striking for their own reasons and not out of sympathy for Sutter nurses.
It just happened that on the same day Sutter nurses staged a one-day walkout, Kaiser nurses took a supportive
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Gateway Realty Agent John Wilkerson
stance for Kaiser mental health workers, about 1,500 of whom are represented by the National Union of Health Care Workers (NUHW) in Northern California, said Brenda Tolbert, a marriage and family therapist with Kaiser.
"They are not striking their own contract," Tolbert said. "The nurses are here to support the mental health workers. We wanted a stronger voice to protect our patient care."
In a letter to Kaiser nurses printed in The Reporter and other newspapers, Northern California Regional President Gregory Adams and Executive Medical Director Robert Pearl asserted that Kaiser is bargaining with NUHW in good faith.
They also noted the agreement with the nurses represented by CNA states, "There shall be no strikes, lockouts or other stoppages, or interruptions of work during the life of this agreement."
Tolbert said hundreds of people stood unified at the corner of Vaca Valley Parkway and Quality Drive in Vacaville on Thursday. Some 50 were mental health workers, the others were nurses who walked off the job and chose not to be paid that day.
One reason for the strike, Tolbert explained, is to stand up for better patient care.
She added that patients have to wait five to six weeks for an appointment when state law says it should be only up to a two-week wait.
"The bottom line is we don't have enough staff," she said, adding that Kaiser recorded a $1.6 billion profit for the first six months of 2011. "With profits like these, Kaiser can provide staff to see patients in a timely and ethical manner.
"We helped Kaiser earn this money, we should be rewarded for it."
At the picket line in front of Kaiser in Vacaville, Aretha Franklin's song "Respect" played on loud speakers, followed by Tom Petty's "Won't Back Down." Dressed in red T-shirts, union members and nurses waved signs that read "Some Cuts Don't Heal," "Fair Contract Now" and "Kaiser is Not Thriving."
Other reasons for the strike include changes to a health plan and retirement packages. Some of those changes will occur in 2013, others in 2014.
Sitting in the shade on the picket line, Rivka Kaplowitz explained that she has been a psychologist with Kaiser for 15 years and she is shocked the health-care provider wants to eliminate benefits for her husband. Kaiser also has proposed giving her only $100 per month toward health-care benefits, she said.
"Who will take me at that rate? They sure won't take me," she said as she pointed to the Kaiser hospital in Vacaville. "I don't get it. You're a health-care provider and you're cutting health care? It doesn't make sense."
As a psychologist, it pains Kaplowitz to see her patients only once every six weeks.
"It's good therapy to see them more often," she said. "I love my job and my patients. The work we do is essential."
Roy Chaffee works at the Kaiser call center in Vallejo and decided to support the NUHW strike in Vacaville even though he is represented by a different union.
He said if Kaiser is willing to attack the smaller unions with huge cuts, it's only a matter of time before the bigger unions will see cuts, too.
"These cuts are absolutely crazy," he said. "It's unnecessary and unprecedented. We're standing up for the patients; we're not going to sit idly by."
Chaffee said the union and those supporting its members want to keep fair wages and health-care benefits in place and protect the staffing numbers. He added that Kaiser's profits should be reinvested in the organization.
The morning wasn't without confrontation.
Before the strike started, CNA Chief Nurse Representative Melanie Alvarado said she tried to speak to the nurses on the night shift, to see that all patients were handed over to other certified nurses called in to relieve the Kaiser nurses.
"They prevented me from speaking to my nurses," she said. "They're not allowed to do that."
Alvarado, who is a Kaiser charge nurse for adult and family medicine, said the union will likely file a complaint against Kaiser because of that action.
Nearly 200 nurses between the Kaiser location in Vacaville and the satellite clinic in Fairfield walked off the job to join picket lines.
Alvarado said that, although CNA members have a good contract with Kaiser, they believe the health-care provider is picking on a little guy.
"There is no reason to do this," she said of the cuts.
"We helped Kaiser earn this money, we should be rewarded for it."
See related: patient dies during lockout of nurses.
See all Kaiser Permanente posts.
Sutter, Kaiser nurses go on strike
By Melissa Murphy
The Reporter (Vacaville)
09/23/2011
...Kaiser Permanente nurses -- who are represented by the California Nurses Association and have settled their own contract -- said they were striking for their own reasons and not out of sympathy for Sutter nurses.
It just happened that on the same day Sutter nurses staged a one-day walkout, Kaiser nurses took a supportive
Advertisement
Gateway Realty Agent John Wilkerson
stance for Kaiser mental health workers, about 1,500 of whom are represented by the National Union of Health Care Workers (NUHW) in Northern California, said Brenda Tolbert, a marriage and family therapist with Kaiser.
"They are not striking their own contract," Tolbert said. "The nurses are here to support the mental health workers. We wanted a stronger voice to protect our patient care."
In a letter to Kaiser nurses printed in The Reporter and other newspapers, Northern California Regional President Gregory Adams and Executive Medical Director Robert Pearl asserted that Kaiser is bargaining with NUHW in good faith.
They also noted the agreement with the nurses represented by CNA states, "There shall be no strikes, lockouts or other stoppages, or interruptions of work during the life of this agreement."
Tolbert said hundreds of people stood unified at the corner of Vaca Valley Parkway and Quality Drive in Vacaville on Thursday. Some 50 were mental health workers, the others were nurses who walked off the job and chose not to be paid that day.
One reason for the strike, Tolbert explained, is to stand up for better patient care.
She added that patients have to wait five to six weeks for an appointment when state law says it should be only up to a two-week wait.
"The bottom line is we don't have enough staff," she said, adding that Kaiser recorded a $1.6 billion profit for the first six months of 2011. "With profits like these, Kaiser can provide staff to see patients in a timely and ethical manner.
"We helped Kaiser earn this money, we should be rewarded for it."
At the picket line in front of Kaiser in Vacaville, Aretha Franklin's song "Respect" played on loud speakers, followed by Tom Petty's "Won't Back Down." Dressed in red T-shirts, union members and nurses waved signs that read "Some Cuts Don't Heal," "Fair Contract Now" and "Kaiser is Not Thriving."
Other reasons for the strike include changes to a health plan and retirement packages. Some of those changes will occur in 2013, others in 2014.
Sitting in the shade on the picket line, Rivka Kaplowitz explained that she has been a psychologist with Kaiser for 15 years and she is shocked the health-care provider wants to eliminate benefits for her husband. Kaiser also has proposed giving her only $100 per month toward health-care benefits, she said.
"Who will take me at that rate? They sure won't take me," she said as she pointed to the Kaiser hospital in Vacaville. "I don't get it. You're a health-care provider and you're cutting health care? It doesn't make sense."
As a psychologist, it pains Kaplowitz to see her patients only once every six weeks.
"It's good therapy to see them more often," she said. "I love my job and my patients. The work we do is essential."
Roy Chaffee works at the Kaiser call center in Vallejo and decided to support the NUHW strike in Vacaville even though he is represented by a different union.
He said if Kaiser is willing to attack the smaller unions with huge cuts, it's only a matter of time before the bigger unions will see cuts, too.
"These cuts are absolutely crazy," he said. "It's unnecessary and unprecedented. We're standing up for the patients; we're not going to sit idly by."
Chaffee said the union and those supporting its members want to keep fair wages and health-care benefits in place and protect the staffing numbers. He added that Kaiser's profits should be reinvested in the organization.
The morning wasn't without confrontation.
Before the strike started, CNA Chief Nurse Representative Melanie Alvarado said she tried to speak to the nurses on the night shift, to see that all patients were handed over to other certified nurses called in to relieve the Kaiser nurses.
"They prevented me from speaking to my nurses," she said. "They're not allowed to do that."
Alvarado, who is a Kaiser charge nurse for adult and family medicine, said the union will likely file a complaint against Kaiser because of that action.
Nearly 200 nurses between the Kaiser location in Vacaville and the satellite clinic in Fairfield walked off the job to join picket lines.
Alvarado said that, although CNA members have a good contract with Kaiser, they believe the health-care provider is picking on a little guy.
"There is no reason to do this," she said of the cuts.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Kaiser has spent $700,000 lobbying their interests in Sacramento in just the first half of this year
Courage Campaign
Rick Jacobs
Sept. 21, 2011
This week, more than 23,000 nurses and other frontline healthcare providers are walking out on Kaiser for a one day strike. They have a simple message: provide quality healthcare, not just $8 million salaries for CEO George Halvorson and millions more for Ben Chu and other hired hands.
What's more, Kaiser has spent $700,000 lobbying their interests in Sacramento in just the first half of this year. That includes stalling AB 52, the law that would have put their rate increases under government control. Why? Because the bosses there are greedy.
Rick Jacobs
Sept. 21, 2011
This week, more than 23,000 nurses and other frontline healthcare providers are walking out on Kaiser for a one day strike. They have a simple message: provide quality healthcare, not just $8 million salaries for CEO George Halvorson and millions more for Ben Chu and other hired hands.
What's more, Kaiser has spent $700,000 lobbying their interests in Sacramento in just the first half of this year. That includes stalling AB 52, the law that would have put their rate increases under government control. Why? Because the bosses there are greedy.
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