By Will Collette
Even though, by Charlestown's way of measuring distance, the brutal labor dispute at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in New London, is a galaxy away, the outcome of that battle will have a profound effect on health and hospital services much closer to home.
You can bet that workers at Westerly Hospital are watching carefully to see how their sisters and brothers do in their battle with the same management that now owns Westerly Hospital.
How this battle goes will provide a pretty good preview of what will happen in under three years when the Westerly nurses and technicians will be sitting across the bargaining table facing the same managers who have been using a Florida temp agency to fly in strike-breakers in from all over the country to fill their jobs at up to $200 an hour.
When it's Westerly's turn to face these guys, you can bet that this time, the L&M managers will try to blackmail workers into accepting a bad deal by using Westerly Hospital's continued existence as hostage.
Let's take a look at what L&M management is willing to do to squeeze its unionized medical staff into submission.
Registered nurses start at between $29.72 and $30.72 an hour, depending on their education level. The maximum pay runs from $43.80 to $47.19, again depending on education.
By contrast, the scab tech agency being used by L&M to recruit strike-breakers, US Allied, is offering $55 an hour to nurse scabs. There are also credible reports of some Connecticut nurses being offered as much as $200 to cross the picket lines.
Hourly rates for union technicians (X-ray, repiratory, mammography) have a starting range of $25.48 to $29.24 and maximum hourly rates of between $38.42 and $44.27.
By contrast, US Allied is offering techs between $70 to $100 per hour, plus travel costs and free lodging, if they will come to New London to cross the AFT picket lines and take jobs away from the locked out nurses and technicians.
These are prices listed right on the US Allied website.
For three years at the national AFL-CIO, I ran the National Temp Campaign and can tell you from direct knowledge that when L&M managers hire strikebreakers from US Allied, they are paying a lot more than the hourly wage and travel costs. Temp agencies mark up those costs substantially - I have seen some temp agencies bill clients at double the amount being paid to the worker.
This is what L&M management, led by $700,000 CEO Bruce Cummings are willing to do rather than bargain in good faith with their staff.
What most people don't know about this labor dispute is that wage issues are secondary to finding a remedy to some of L&M's most troubling corporate practices.
Cummings has been steadily converting L&M from being the area's largest non-profit hospital into becoming a galaxy of for-profit, non-union specialty medicine shops. He has been moving hospital services out into new L&M-owned subsidiaries and, instead of letting hospital workers follow those jobs to the new subsidiary, new workers are hired instead. Non-union, of course.
L&M has also been moving its money out of the hospital and, in at least one case, off-shore. The union has tracked more than $110 million spent on subsidiaries and another $13+ million in "alternative investments." One of those is a "captive" self-insurance fund that L&M will use to sell itself malpractice insurance.
Lawrence & Memorial Chief Financial Officer Lou Inzana confirmed this to the New London Day, but dismissed rumors that L&M had moved $20 million off-shore. He said that L&M decided to set up this "captive" self-insurance agency because Connecticut law forbids them from setting it up in the state.
Cummings, and to a lesser degree Inzana, have also show remarkable acrobatic skill when they talk about the hospital's finances. When they talk to the media or to their colleagues, the story is that they're doing great - they're in the black and running well. They even made the claim of pulling off a fast financial turn-around at Westerly Hospital, ending its growing deficit and bringing its finances into the black.
But when L&M managers are at the bargaining table, or talking to the government, they put on the sackcloth and ashes and cry poverty.
They act like classic Wall Streeters who will tell investors one story and regulators an exactly opposition one. They will tell whatever story works.
They are aided by the complicated web of corporate and subsidiary relationships they have built. For most non-profits, everything you need to know about their finances is in their IRS 990 annual reports. While there may a lag time that makes this information not up-to-date, it least it's all there. But when L&M creates a network of for-profit subsidiaries and moves money around, including to off-shore captives, the transparency and accountability we normally expect from hospitals breaks down.
No doubt Cummings and his management team will argue that it is necessary in these modern times for a hospital to run more like a multi-national conglomerate in order to succeed. But let's remember that this business model also can lead to some spectacular failures.
They are aided by the complicated web of corporate and subsidiary relationships they have built. For most non-profits, everything you need to know about their finances is in their IRS 990 annual reports. While there may a lag time that makes this information not up-to-date, it least it's all there. But when L&M creates a network of for-profit subsidiaries and moves money around, including to off-shore captives, the transparency and accountability we normally expect from hospitals breaks down.
No doubt Cummings and his management team will argue that it is necessary in these modern times for a hospital to run more like a multi-national conglomerate in order to succeed. But let's remember that this business model also can lead to some spectacular failures.
After today's bargaining, hopefully we'll learn how much of posturing took place. L&M is still under lots of pressure to settle and end the lock out. These negotiations will be conducted under the supervision of a federal mediator.
Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen called on both sides to work hard to reach a fair deal, but in particular, he called on L&M to end its lock-out: "I encourage L + M to reconsider its decision to lock out workers, who have called off their strike and expressed a willingness to return to their important work caring for L + M’s patients. L + M need not wait for negotiations to start, or to bear fruit, before permitting workers to return to their jobs."
You are also encouraged to sign an on-line petition showing your solidarity with the union nurses and technicians. Click here for the petition.