About Bargaining

Barbara said...
Looking forward, we are finally at the bargaining table. We will get a contract!!!! The kind of contract we end up with is totally dependent upon the people we represent backing us up. Participate, ask questions, keep informed, help your fellow workers to overcome their fear. Don't be afraid to discuss union matters in front of others. Visibility is our friend. I am not ashamed to be a Union Steward or a union member. As you speak freely, you educate others and they find their voice too. Come to the bargaining meetings. It is your business to know what is happening in your behalf. Management wants the union to be invisible and ineffective. I am determined to fight for meaningful change in this contract, not just wages but rights for employees and for means to provide better patient care. My name is Barbara Garcia and I don't need my comments to be anonymous. Hope to see you at the next bargaining date, March 18th at the Courtyard at the Marriot.

About Retro Pay

There are two kinds of "retro pay" that we can talk about.

If you've been following the service unit's negotiations with the hospital's administration, you'll know that the service unit has proposed a retroactive payment of 3% back to July 1st of 2007 [see Bargaining Update News on our website:  enloemedicine.org]. This retro pay proposal is only for the raise the administration should have given us, but refused "because we're negotiating." This raise comes from their bogus market survey of small, low-paying, non-union hospitals.

Another type of "retro pay" folks are talking about is a payment that would go all the way back to 2004 when we won the election to be represented by SEIU-UHW. If you remember, the Board of Trustees and the senior management of our hospital tried to bust our union by using stall tactics, taking appeals all the way to the Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, where the judges basically laughed our administration out of the court. They were forced to finally sit down and start negotiating with us. 

Our Board and Sr. Mgmt. has had a habit of spending millions of dollars fighting their workers' unions...all wasted money that could have been used to pay their employees the same kinds of wages other hospital workers in the north state now receive. Perhaps this is 'water under the bridge', but many of us are not just angry at OUR administration's bad decisions, but would like other hospital administrations, who are thinking of likewise fighting their workers, to have second thoughts. Our country's labor laws are skewed against labor [!!!], but in favor of business [go figure!]. Bad administrators never get truly fired or punished for their bad decisions, but instead "step down" or retire, AND get a very lucrative severance package.

A 'disciplinary' retro payment might convince the next anti-union hospital administration to more quickly begin negotiations with their workers.

But one thing we must all keep in mind is that the administration will probably throw this disciplinary retro into their 'financial basket' which would include our wage proposal, along with health insurance, retirement, PTO adjustments, and other 'economic' proposals. Then they would hope WE would fight amongst OURSELVES over how to divvy up the amount of money they would say is available. They'd be hoping some of us would reject the 'less' important stuff, and push for just the wage proposal, which is probably what happened to our RNs when they negotiated with our administration a couple of years ago. Its easy to do. Our minds salivate just thinking of 'all that money'. But let's keep our eyes on the big prize: Industry Standards. Believe me, other hospital workers here at Enloe and all over the state are watching us and counting on us. 

...Still...there must be a way to discipline the Board and the old guard Sr. Mgmt....

How did Enloe's executives pull this off?

Some of us at Enloe may be wondering if our fair institution is making enough 'profit' to afford to raise our workers up to the Industry Standards our brethren hospital workers in Red Bluff and Redding now enjoy.

If you go to our mother website enloemedicine.org (Medicine for Mismanagement) [see link above] you'll notice on the home or front page, on the left is a column of links to sections of the website. The fifth bullet down is titled "Enloe Executive Pay." Click on that link and you'll be taken to a multi-page section of the site.

On the top page of this section, under FINANCIAL you'll see – for the last several years available – the total "Profit/(Loss*) our Enloe was able to make. Don't ask me (yet) if all these profits were legitimate for a 'non-profit' to make. I believe the government puts a cap on the amount of profit a non-profit can make in a year.

Then if you go down to the next two pages you'll see the compensation paid to our senior executives: Phil Wolfe, Christine Sarrico, Dan Neumeister, and so on. None of us want to see our executives not compensated fairly. Now remember, these are the same executives who made all those bad decisions: buying out Chico Community Hospital to get rid of competition, selling (cheaply) our large Bruce Road property where we should have put the expansion, squeezing our present expansion into a neighborhood that knew there would be problems – both present and in the future, spending millions on fighting our nurses' union and then our UHW union, outsourcing our housekeepers and our dietary workers, getting rid of the beloved anesthesiologist group after being warned by our surgeons of probable problems, and on and on. OK, let's continue...

Go down to page 4 and you'll see a comparison of the compensation of our chief executives to those of a couple of hospitals of similar size. One has to wonder what 'market survey' our Board of Trustees used to decide on the compensation for our executives! Perhaps you are now saying to yourselves, "Are our senior executives being overpaid?" I don't think our senior executives would request a pay cut so their employees might be better compensated with the savings, if that's where you were going with that question. But...who knows.

So there's money. The question is whether or not it's being spent wisely, and also FAIRLY. I, for one, would LOVE to see Enloe's financial 'books'. That would be interesting reading.

* You'll see a loss in one year [2002] when Medicare changed its payments, and many hospitals took a hit.

Super duped on Tuesday?

So, Super Tuesday is over. Obama and Clinton of the Democratic/Labor Party are still in the running. So is McCain of the Republican/Corporation Party. However, it looks like Romney and Huckabee are down, but not quite out. I wonder if McCain's fawning over Huckabee means they are positioning themselves as the Republican ticket for November. Clinton surprised me by beating Obama here in California. What happened there?! How could the polls be so wrong in recent years? Are the poll takers of recent times incompetent? Or, do we Americans now lie to them? Do you wonder if those touch-screen voting machines have been tampered with? 

Justice and Respect at Enloe

Can we talk; about fairness, justice and respect? Enloe administration doesn’t support industry standard wages, staffing or job security. Other north states hospitals out earn and benefit us; have security and a voice. You say; give us facts and figures, but the fact is, we don’t get fair standards like Red Bluff and Redding. St Elizabeths gets 100% health and dental coverage; not us! Enloe staff still lacks job security or a say in our future. Our hospital image is low, while employees provide quality care for patients and community. No wonder we voted for union protection from unfair out sourcing and lay offs, to boot.

Does Enloe leadership think it can treat staff this way without consequences? We need fair just treatment for all employees throughout our one and only Chico hospital. No living from pay checks to pay check for hard working staff. No more harassment for organizing coworkers or fear of lost jobs without input. Don’t ignore us. We have something to offer. We give our all every day. Administration needs to change by improving benefits, morale and image for a hospital staff that’s there for others, including administration. This administration can’t do it themselves. They need our help. It’s only right to treat employees who treat others, with respect and honesty. It’s been all so disappointing and must end. Justice and respect now for staff, patient and community; Enloe's that is.

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For my latest letter at ChicoBeat.com follow this link.