By Elizabeth Cloutman
 Photo by Monique Schoenfeld, Town Crier |
As El Camino Hospital was in the midst of an accreditation inspection June 30, members of the Service Employees International Union, Local 715, formed a long picket line. The large group - estimated by the union to be about 225-250 people - chanted cheers as they walked the perimeter of the hospital campus in the late afternoon heat.
“What do we want? Contract! When do we want it? Now! … Who’s in the street? 715! Who’s going to win? 715!” SEIU members shouted as they walked, holding picket signs aloft. The picket line formed after union members and officials held a spirited rally at the hospital’s main entrance.
Picketing was the most recent expression of open disagreement between hospital management and union negotiators. After nearly five months of negotiations, they remain at an impasse on the issue of the hospital’s becoming an agency (closed) shop; In agency shop, all service employees would be required to pay about one percent of their annual salary to the union. In early May, a federal mediator was brought in.
Stacey Parris, the union organizer for El Camino, said SEIU has filed a complaint of unfair labor practices against the hospital with the National Board of Labor Relations. Union members and officials have complained that the hospital administration violated its promise of neutrality when it allowed hospital administrators to answer questions about the definitions of “agency” and “closed shop” during mandatory staff meetings, and also when CEO Lee Domanico issued a letter in which he defined “open” and “agency shop.”
“Management has held meetings of captive audiences,” Parris said. “They’ve been coercive about saying, ‘You should have an open shop.’”
El Camino Communications Manager Judy Twitchell responded for the administration: “The hospital has had a long and positive association with other unions. Management is very careful about following all the standards of the Labor Relations Act. There’s no reason they would violate these rules and risk the good relations that we have with the unions we work with.
A hospital news release, issued the day of the rally, stated that while 45 percent of 835 eligible employees voted for union representation last fall, 55 percent either voted “No” or not at all. “We believe the fairest way to settle the issue is to hold an election,” the release said. “The hospital is willing to abide by the results, one way or the other.”
Parris and Christy Sermersheim, the chief union negotiators, have both said that in May, SEIU made an “off-the-record compromise” offer, but management refused to accept it. SEIU officials have said in the past they are opposed to an election on agency shop because SEIU won a 61 percent majority in last fall’s election to adopt the union.
The union rally came five days before union negotiators and hospital management were scheduled to resume discussions on contract terms for non-nursing employees, following a three-week hiatus. The Town Crier went to press before Monday’s negotiation session.
“We needed to have a rally,” Parris said Thursday. “Management’s been stalling negotiations.”
Parris said the rally was not planned to coincide with the three-day inspection by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Hospital and Health Care Organizations. She said it was planned just as a union activity during the “three weeks of a dry spell” between negotiation sessions.
