Will it have any effect on Westerly
Hospital?
By
Will Collette
 |
| L&M workers, reluctantly, prepare to strike if management remains inflexible |
Labor
relations continue to deteriorate between Westerly Hospital’s new owner,
Lawrence & Memorial Hospital (L&M) of Stonington and its unions.
In this earlier report, I described how management at L&M has provoked this crisis through use of union-busting tactics such as eliminating union jobs at the hospital by moving the work to wholly-owned non-union subsidiaries.
In this earlier report, I described how management at L&M has provoked this crisis through use of union-busting tactics such as eliminating union jobs at the hospital by moving the work to wholly-owned non-union subsidiaries.
Tactics
like these have backfired on management. For example, L&M’s “double-breasting” tactic made it easier
for the Connecticut AFT to win a November 8th union vote at one of those
subsidiaries, VNA of Southeastern Connecticut. The 26 home health aides working
for the agency voted
overwhelmingly for representation by AFT CT Local 5119.
"I voted 'yes' for a shot at making the job I love one I can
afford to keep doing," says Donna Miller, a home health aide with 10
years of experience. "The low wages
and expensive healthcare were making it tough for me to hang on. Now I can tell
my patients that I will be there for them when they need me."
L&M’s
contract with its 540 registered nurses and 250 licensed practical nurses and
technicians at its main facility has expired as of November 16 and negotiations
on a new contract have not produced an agreement.
Those
workers have taken a strike
vote and overwhelmingly gave their approval to leadership to call a strike if management
continues its intransigence at the bargaining table. The strike could commence on November 27.
In a statement issued by the union, Lisa D'Abrosca, an RN at L&M Hospital and president of AFT Local 5049 said "By voting to strike, we're standing up for our community and the quality care they deserve. This is not a decision any of us take lightly. But we are deeply concerned that the community is losing the hospital it has counted on for over 100 years."
The
two sides are expected to go
back to the bargaining table on November 21. Meanwhile, the union is
considering “informational picketing” to begin on November 25 and has set
November 27 as the possible date for a strike. L&M management has already
been broadly criticized for recruiting
“scabs”
who are prepared to fly in to Connecticut to work as strike-breakers.
The
unions’ charges that L&M management engaged in union-busting unfair labor
practices was sustained by the National Labor Relations Board which issued its
own charges against L&M and will be bringing the hospital before an
administrative law judge to determine final remedies and penalties.
The
union declares that L&M’s anti-worker tactics affect patient care by
purging experienced health professionals and by taking patient services out of
the hospital and dispersing them among L&M’s many subsidiaries.
L&M
management’s determination to “outsource” these patient services were cited as
one of the main reasons why talks for a new contract broke down, according to the
Hartford Courant.
Union leadership says simply that they want their members to be able to follow
the work – i.e. if a union job at the hospital is moved to a subsidiary, that
union worker should be allowed to keep the job in the new venue.
Management
has been simply laying off the worker and hiring a new, unorganized worker to
fill the outsourced job at lower pay and benefits. The union says this means
patients get taken care of by inexperienced new workers who are not paid a
living wage.
The
hospital likes the practice because it is good for its bottom line. Three
rounds of lay-offs, enabled largely by L&M’s outsourcing, raised L&M’s
2012 profits to 7.53%.
L&M
CEO Bruce Cummings has just been elected to become the President of the
Connecticut Hospital Association. Former CT Republican Party chair Christopher
Healy lauds his election and calls Cummings a beacon and example for other
hospitals to follow in breaking the back of their unions and fighting back
against CT Governor Dannel Malloy’s efforts to curb health care inflation.
Cummings
is paid one of the highest hospital CEO salaries in the area, a compensation
package totaling $702,417.
Healy wrote in
Hartford Business:
“The future of Connecticut's hospital
system may soon be in the hands of someone who has the urgency of an emergency
room nurse — fearless, quick to assess the situation with the confidence to
take charge amid chaos.”
One important part of L&M's financial strategy has been to pile up cash and invest a large chunk of it in hedge funds and other "alternative investment vehicles" as explained below:
In a recent letter to local town officials, including Charlestown, quoted by the Westerly Sun, L&M CEO Cummings claimed that his new management style has worked its magic with troubled Westerly Hospital. According to Cummings, “Pass the word: Westerly is back!”
In a recent letter to local town officials, including Charlestown, quoted by the Westerly Sun, L&M CEO Cummings claimed that his new management style has worked its magic with troubled Westerly Hospital. According to Cummings, “Pass the word: Westerly is back!”
Of
course, that’s good news for a hospital that came within a whisker of having to
close its doors. However, it’s fair to wonder how long it will be before the
kind of brutal, anti-worker tactics that have been Cummings’ trademark at
L&M will be put into action at Westerly Hospital.
While
L&M has done for Westerly Hospital what Westerly’s former lackluster and
scarcely lamented former management was unable to do, is it necessary to
achieve cost-savings at the expense of worker rights? And if so, how will that
affect patient care?
If
L&M contract talks fail to produce an agreement and we see a strike within
the next ten days, it will be interesting to see how much of that spills over
to Westerly Hospital.