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San Francisco Medical Center is Site for Strike

Posted on: Tuesday, 13 September 2005, 00:00 CDT

Sep. 13--Canceling walkouts against seven Bay Area medical centers, union health care workers will begin an open-ended strike at San Francisco's California Pacific Medical Center today as part of a battle with hospital chain Sutter Health.

About 800 members of the Service Employees International Union United Health Care Workers are involved in the job action at CPMC's three campuses. The medical center said it has hired replacement workers to fill in for the housekeepers, food service workers, technologists and some licensed vocational nurses who will be on the picket line.

SEIU-UHW and eight medical centers owned by Sutter have been entrenched in a bitter contract dispute for more than a year. Ten days ago union officials announced a strike that would have affected the East Bay's Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Eden Medical Center and Sutter Delta Medical Center.

Officials from SEIU-UHW said they changed tactics for two reasons.

First, because CPMC is one of Sutter's key medical centers, a strike there sends a message to the entire organization, they said. Second, union officials said CPMC backtracked on its agreement to a deal offered by a federal mediator.

The proposal would have forced both sides to compromise. The union would have had to drop its push for a master contract with all Sutter hospitals.

But it would have gained the right to union elections without interference by the hospitals, and it would have gotten third-party binding arbitration for staffing disputes.

CPMC administrators agreed during a conference call with the mediator and union officials to accept the settlement offer, said John Borsos, SEIU-UHW vice president and lead negotiator with Sutter. But when SEIU-UHW released the settlement terms last week, CPMC administrators backpedaled, he said.

The Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service could not be reached to verify Borsos' comments, and CPMC spokeswoman Christine McMurry denied that administrators had agreed to the settlement terms.

"It's not true," she said. "They took our good-faith efforts and tried to distort it and manipulate it to their gain. They're not looking out for our employees' best interests."

Medical centers that were originally targeted expressed relief that the union had called off the strike at their facilities.

"We're pleased that they changed course and decided to call off the disruptive strike," said Stacy Vaillancourt, spokeswoman for Sutter Delta Medical Center in Antioch.

It will still have cost Sutter Delta an undisclosed amount of money, Vaillancourt said.

To prepare for the strike, Sutter Delta hired about 80 replacement workers and put them through orientation sessions. The hospital is obligated to pay replacements who are registered nurses and respiratory therapists as if they had worked for 48 hours. It must also pay replacements for hospital support staff such as housekeepers and food service workers for time spent in orientation.

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Copyright (c) 2005, Contra Costa Times, Walnut Creek, Calif.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.)

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