By Elizabeth Cloutman

Talks between Service Employees International Union, Local 715, representatives and El Camino Hospital management have gone into federal mediation after four months of negotiations failed to bring any resolution to their disagreement over agency shop. The first mediation session lasted all day Thursday but yielded little progress, according to Keeley Blanchette, El Camino’s director of community relations.

“We’re hopeful we can resolve things,” said Christy Sermersheim, the union’s chief negotiator for the El Camino contract talks.

“We’ve brought in a federal mediator, David Weinberg. He came to try to break the log jam … Everything is off the record, so I can’t really say anything more.”

The agency shop issue has been the key sticking point in negotiating the service employees’ contract with El Camino.

Union officials insists that the hospital become an agency shop, in which all 855 service employees would be required to pay about one percent of their salaries in union dues.

Hospital management said that it is unwilling to agree to agency shop unless the union holds an election in which all hospital service employees can vote on the issue.

Officials note that a substantial number of service employees are opposed to agency shop, citing a petition supporting open shop, signed by 400 service employees and presented at the April 11 board of directors’ meeting.

In an open shop, union dues would be voluntary for nonmembers.

According to Judy Twitchell, El Camino’s communications manager, the hospital told the union in early April that it was willing to agree to the results of an election.

The union is strongly opposed to such an election.

“A strong majority signed the initial petition for a union,” said Stacey Parris, union work site organizer.

“We won the election (on unionizing service workers) by 61 percent. Why should we hold a second election?”

A second mediation session was scheduled for Monday, after this week’s issue of agency shop had gone to press.