In 1973, at the age of 23, David Cox got out of the Army and found a job in the laboratory at St. Joseph Hospital of Orange. Thirty-four years later, he is still at St. Joseph, still working in the laboratory.
While Cox's career has held remarkably steady over the years, St. Joseph – and indeed, the entire health care industry – have changed, and not for the better, in his opinion. "I trained to be part of a team that would be effective in helping a physician diagnose and heal," he said. Today, "a lot of our focus seems to be on healing as fast and as quick and as cheap as we can. And I don't think that's always the best way."
When he first started at the hospital, supervisors seemed to listen more, Cox said. "If you had a problem, you could take it to the sisters," he said, referring to the nuns of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange.
Cox and other employees want larger voice in how care is delivered. That's partly why they're trying to organize a labor union at hospitals owned by nonprofit St. Joseph Health System, which also include St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton and Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo.
It's unclear how many employees at the hospitals support the formation of a union, and it's unlikely that the matter will be put to a vote anytime soon. That's because the union doesn't intend to seek an election until the management agrees in advance to a set of rules governing how such an election would be conducted, something management says it's not inclined to do.
SJHS' status as a Catholic institution – it is a ministry of the Sisters of St. Joseph, although the nuns have withdrawn from day-to-day operation of the hospitals – has led to questions about whether the health system is in compliance with Catholic social teaching on labor unions.
Monsignor John Brenkle, a Catholic priest in Sonoma County, has been critical of SJHS's response to a union organizing campaign at its hospital in Santa Rosa.
"We have a very strong theory of social teachings about ... the need for unions ... yet when it comes time for a particular union to move in, then all of a sudden the institution finds all sorts of reasons not to allow the union equal access," he said. "The aggressive anti-union stance that the system has taken, that saddens me."
Deborah Proctor, the chief executive of SJHS, says that "in a Catholic organization, we endorse an employee's right to choose to be represented by a union."
However, she adds, "what's most important, what Catholic social teaching starts with – it doesn't start out talking about unions, it starts by talking about the dignity of the person. That's the primary principle of Catholic social teaching."
"Our disagreement is not over whether employees have a right to organize, our disagreement is over what will most ensure a fair and informed choice for employees," she said. "And it's only around those issues that we have some disagreements."
ELECTION CONCERNS
The National Labor Relations Act, the federal law that governs dealings between employers and unions, sets out rules for how an organizing election should be conducted. Once a union has collected signatures from at least 30 percent of the members of a proposed bargaining unit, it can file a petition with the National Labor Relations Board seeking an election.
However, unions have become disenchanted with the NLRB process, saying the agency is too slow to rule on complaints of unfair labor practices, such as when managers are accused of harassing union supporters or trying to intimidate other employees into voting against a union. The slowness of the NLRB's judicial process essentially gives management free rein to harass and intimidate workers in the six-week window between when a petition is filed and when an election is held, because complaints aren't resolved until long afterward, unions say.
That's why the Service Employees International Union wants SJHS to agree in advance to "free and fair" election rules, said Glenn Goldstein, director of organizing for SEIU's United Healthcare Workers-West local.
In 2003, the SEIU began trying to organize workers at SJHS's Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. In late 2004, the union filed a petition with the NLRB, and an election was scheduled for February 2005, Goldstein said.
"Management had a very aggressive anti-union campaign that included mandatory meetings on work time and a lot of supervisory and managerial interference, including threats and unfair labor practices," Goldstein said.
Support for the union "began to erode ... because of this very heavy-handed intimidation campaign," Goldstein said. The union withdrew its election petition.
Santa Rosa Memorial agreed in July 2005 to settle one charge of unfair labor practices by agreeing to post a notice specifying workers' right to organize. A second charge was dismissed, said Tim Peck, assistant to the regional director of the NLRB's office in San Francisco.
SJHS says that it has since adopted a code of conduct for how managers will handle union organizing issues. The code says, in part, that "any communication that we share with employees during union representation discussions will attempt to reasonably, respectfully and fairly convey our points of view in the context of both sides of the issue."
Still, local employees have complained of what they say are attempts by managers to intimidate workers who support the union.
After Cox's photo appeared in a union flier that he helped to distribute outside the hospital, he was called into a meeting by his supervisor and a human resources manager who wanted to know why one copy of the flier had been found in a work area, he said.
"I'm not responsible for where they end up," Cox says he told them. The meeting "left me with a bad feeling, very intimidated, very angry. …It seems obvious to me I was singled out because my picture was there."
Since then, the situation has changed: Cox is now allowed to post union fliers and newspaper articles about the organizing effort on a bulletin board in his work area.
Jan Smith, who works at St. Jude in Fullerton, said she and others were told by hospital security officers to leave when they were passing out union fliers outside the hospital in March.
A "second time, they came out and took our names. A manager came out and told us we weren't supposed to be there. We said yes, it was our right. They asked us for our names and said they were going to make a report to risk management," Smith said.
WORKER OPPOSITION
Other SJHS employees are opposed to forming a union.
Susie Slayton has worked at St. Joseph Hospital for 18 years. Previously, she worked in manufacturing for Kwikset Locks when it was in Anaheim. At Kwikset, she voted for a union, but says one isn't needed at SJHS.
Slayton fears that introducing a union would create "a big chasm between the employees and the supervisor that's not there now," she said. ""I have yet to see a manager that wouldn't take the time to sit down and listen to an employee."
While she's heard colleagues complain about a lack of staffing in some departments, that's attributable to a shortage of qualified applicants, said Slayton, who works in employee health services. "I've never heard people actually griping about not having the stuff they need to do their job."
Bernice Young, an EKG Technician at St. Jude for 17 years, also opposes a union. "I don't need somebody to speak for me," she said.
SJHS was one of 12 organizations chosen to receive a 2007 "Great Workplace Award" by the Gallup Organization, recognizing "one of the most productive and engaged workforces in the world," the company said.
There's no indication that the stalemate between the union and SJHS will be resolved anytime soon.
In a full-page ad published in the Register, Sister Katherine Gray, general superior of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, wrote that "we endorse our employees' right to organize under the processes set out by the (NLRB) ... We have arrived at our position through great thought and extensive conversation with employees, Catholic theologians, people at various levels of the labor movement and other interested parties."
The union's position is that it won't file a petition with the NLRB until SJHS first agrees to ground rules for an election.
Cox knows that the standoff could last indefinitely if neither side budges.
"We're going to have to keep bringing our message. We're going to have to reach more people," he said.
(ocregister.com)
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