Approximately 700 non-nursing health care workers have planned a five-day strike starting Monday amid disagreements with Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center management over contract negotiations in recent months.
Representatives from the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West claim that hospital management engaged in bad faith bargaining and other illegal tactics, including silencing workers.
The hospital bargaining team in a recent press release said that it proposed “significant wage increases and contract enhancements” — including a 24% increase in wages over a three-year contract and significant market wage adjustments for many jobs.
“Unfortunately, the union has offered unrealistic counterproposals in response and has chosen to strike instead of continuing contract negotiations,” hospital officials said in a statement.
The contract for non-nursing workers expired in August. The most recent bargaining session took place Oct. 13, and the two groups will meet for further contract negotiations after the five-day demonstrations.
The union issued a 10-day notice last week of its intended labor action.
“Workers are taking this action of last resort after months of trying to address the facilities’ long-standing issues of understaffing, worker turnover and patient care concerns at the bargaining table. They have been met only by bad faith bargaining and other Unfair Labor Practices by Providence Saint Joseph management,” said Maria Leal, a spokeswoman for the union.
Frontline health care workers including lab technicians, phlebotomists, EMTs, patient transporters, EVS workers and other professions will be participating in the strike.
“We are being intimidated and threatened for wanting to improve our hospital, while Providence executives bargain in bad faith over solutions to our short-staffing crisis,” said Christian Ayon, a Lead Surgical Technician at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center. “This used to be a premier hospital, but we are struggling to give the quality care our patients deserve as we watch staff leave and positions go unfilled. We fight not just for ourselves but for our patients that depend on us.”
PSJMC officials told the Leader that they are well prepared for the five-day strike and have assured patients and the community that the planned work stoppage will have no impact on the safe, high-quality care they have come to expect from Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center.
The hospital will maintain its daily operations and has contracted replacement workers for members of the bargaining unit who choose to strike, officials said.
“PSJMC firmly believes that strikes don’t settle contracts; they delay them and keep our caregivers from getting the pay and benefits enhancements they deserve,” the hospital said in a statement. “The PSJMC bargaining team will return to the bargaining table after the strike ends.”
Members of the union said that working conditions have created an unsafe environment for patient care, an allegation made by nurses who picketed late last year and settled a landmark contract in February.
“While we remained dedicated to ensuring quality care in our communities and fighting for safe working conditions during the pandemic, many health care companies used it as an excuse to profit and cut care across California. They have short-staffed us, outsourced our jobs, laid off caregivers, failed to provide adequate protective equipment and more,” said the union.
First published in the October 21 print issue of the Burbank Leader.
