Union demands and Assembly bill call for transparency

By Kate Day, Special to the Town Crier

Union supporters carried signs advocating an agency shop during a demonstration in front of El Camino Hospital last week.

The issue of public disclosure again engulfed El Camino Hospital last week. The hospital’s service workers union, and some patients and residents filed a lawsuit against the hospital April 18 to open up compensation and financial records. Hospital officials said they were already doing that.

Members of Service Employee International Union (SEIU) Local 715 marched outside the hospital, renewing calls for an election to restructure the union. Assemblywoman Sally Lieber announced the introduction of a bill Friday clarifying El Camino Hospital’s status as a public entity.

The lawsuit was filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court on behalf of dialysis patient William Teglia and Victor Bazan, the Sunnyvale husband of a sub-acute care patient, and Local 715. Spurring the lawsuit in part is

the hospital’s announced closure of its sub-acute unit in December.

“El Camino Hospital needs to be publicly accountable to its patients and employees,” Bazan said. “It is a public organization, and we’re legally entitled to know how it’s spending our money.”

Jon Friedenberg, president of the El Camino Hospital Foundation, dismissed the request for transparency as a “nonissue.”

“We already provide full financial disclosure by releasing salary and benefit information for the hospital’s top five executives and contractors, reporting financial information to the public at monthly board meetings and providing opportunity for public comment, and publishing audited financials in local newspapers each year,” he said.

A publicly elected hospital district board governs the hospital, but it operates as a non-profit, private business. An El Camino Hospital Corp. board that oversees those operations is appointed by the public district board. The facility is funded in part by taxes, including a $148 million bond measure passed by voters in 2003.

Tammy Buckles, a clinical lab scientist and chief steward for employees, said, “The hospital made a $20 million profit, so why are there budget cuts?”

“We don’t know, because the hospital pretends not to be a public hospital,” she said.

Union attorney Vincent Harrington said, “We want to establish once and for all that the hospital is a public entity.”

Lieber’s bill states that as long as the district maintains control over the board, El Camino Hospital should be considered a public entity with regard to financial disclosure and employee rights. “This issue has been festering for a number of years,” said Lieber, a Democrat whose district includes El Camino Hospital. “Bill AB 759 will prevent the need to turn to a lawsuit in the future.”

Friedenberg disputed the notion that the hospital is public. “We’re not a county hospital like Valley Medical, neither are we a private hospital,” he said. “The bill is curious. It is a narrow interest bill designed to please (Lieber’s) largest campaign contributor.”

Even if El Camino were declared a public hospital - in the courts or in the Assembly - it would not be required to disclose any additional financial information, Friedenberg said. “This is just a smoke screen to impose agency shop,” he said.

Agency shop would require workers either to join the union or pay the costs of union representation in collective bargaining with the administration. Under the current open-shop arrangement nonmembers do not pay for representation. Stanford, Valley Medical and Kaiser hospitals all have agency shops.

Union spokesman Jerry Jimenez said, “The majority of hospital staff want agency shop so that the workforce is more secure and can provide better care for patients.”

Local 715 has asked for an election on agency shop since the initiative failed in a vote August 2003. The election was held under hospital rules, which counted a non-vote as a vote against agency shop. Local 715 wants a rerun using state rules, which would discount non votes.

Friedenberg said the union wanted to limit the vote to its members to force agency shop.