By The recent impasse between workers and management at El Camino Hospital over a new contract is unfortunate but not unusual, especially considering the economy and the struggle for all of us these days to make ends meet.
With no new agreement in sight, the union representing approximately 1,000 workers, from janitors to dietitians, continued to hold rallies last week in an effort to win over public support. The big bone of contention seems to be over the hospital’s share of paid health benefits.
Fighting for the workers is their union, SEIU Local 715, which has pulled out all the stops with two large rallies in front of the hospital, signs posted throughout the hospital district, press releases and even a complaint to the labor relations board about El Camino management interfering with union efforts to communicate with workers.
While we sympathize with the hospital workers and expect both sides to work out a fair deal soon, we take issue with the union’s spread of false and misleading information in order to get its point across. Rallies and protests are fine, as are publicizing the true issues facing workers. But putting out signs that say, “60 hospitals have quality health-care standards - why not El Camino?” is not only untrue but proves an insult to the very employees the union is representing.
Perhaps the union is actually referring to other hospitals that pay all health benefits for their workers, as it expects El Camino to do. But what it actually says is that El Camino doesn’t have health-care standards. This flies in the face of years of survey results that consistently show El Camino near or at the top in every health-care category from patient satisfaction to inpatient nursing care.
Although union employees are not doctors, their contributions have made these results possible. The custodian cleaning the floors contributes to the hospital’s sanitized condition that limits the spread of diseases. Employees work as a team to make the hospital what it is.
In addition, there is a union-sponsored ad showing a woman complaining of no health benefits, in which thewoman is not an employee of El Camino Hospital. “There’s a good reason why she has no benefits,” one official remarked. “She doesn’t work here.”
These tactics hurt, not help, the workers’ cause. They also hurts the hospital where they work, a hospital whose future depends on voter approval in November of a bond needed to rebuild the old hospital tower. We’re confident union organizers have valid points to make on behalf of the workers, but they must be grounded in truth.
