St. Louise Regional Hospital
’s service and technical workers participated in an
informational picket Thursday urging management to provide a fair
contract to replace the one that expired the day before. They want
to establish an education fund to provide financial support for
continued training as well as retirement benefits
.
St. Louise Regional Hospital’s service and technical workers participated in an informational picket Thursday urging management to provide a fair contract to replace the one that expired the day before. They want to establish an education fund to provide financial support for continued training as well as retirement benefits.
Workers joined the picket during their lunch break shouting: “What do we want? Contracts. What’s this about? Patient care.”
Daughters of Charity manages St. Louise in Gilroy as well as O’Connor Hospital in San Jose, Seton Medical Center in Daly City and Seton Coastside in Moss Beach. The picket, organized by the Service Employees International Union, took place at all four locations.
While SEIU members are pushing for a master contract between the four hospitals, management at St. Louise wants to focus on meeting the needs of the South Valley facility.
“We want to continue to have a contract that is unique to, and meets the needs of our associates, patients, community and hospital here in Gilroy,” said Steve Sharrer, vice president of Human Resources.
Union member and respiratory therapist Kathleen Volle says management is trying to divide and conquer.
“This hospital is related to all other Daughters of Charity facilities. If we could transfer to the other hospitals with the same benefits, that means we will keep our employees. They say they want to focus on this community but they don’t want equality,” Volle said.
St. Louise union field representative Bob Downing said management is prolonging negotiations by insisting on having separate contracts for the different hospitals.
“With the master contract SEIU will ensure that we have consistently high standards of patient care throughout the Daughters of Charity hospitals,” Downing said. “It doesn’t make sense for the same corporation dealing with the same union to have different standards. Why should members in Gilroy have different benefits and different conditions than people 30 miles up the road at O’Connor?”
Management feels they have been working with SEIU, starting negotiations before the contract was set to expire and even extending that date.
“We are currently in negotiations for contracts and we are bargaining in good faith with them. We have been making progress but they’ve chosen to take that path,” Sharrer said referring to the pickets.
They have met with union members seven times and offered additional dates that SEIU was unable to attend. Members responded that they have been unable to attend all proposed dates because they are negotiating the same issues at all four hospitals.
Rick Villegas, a MRI technician at St. Louise, said discussions would be much more efficient if they could all gather at one table.
Union members made it clear that the picket was not a strike, scheduling it during lunch so people would not take time away from work.
“We are health care workers. We care about the services our patients get,” said Volle, who has been with St. Louise Hospital for 12 years.
The demonstrators said they want to create an environment at all facilities which attracts and retains quality personnel.
SEIU recently completed negotiations with Catholic Healthcare West. They agreed on one contract for 28 hospitals which includes a training and upgrade fund to provide financial help for health care workers taking additional training courses. They also guaranteed to discuss retirement benefits during the next negotiation period and is making an effort to work with SEIU. Kaiser also has a standard contract that provides healthcare for retired employees. Union members with Daughters of Charity will continue fighting for similar benefits.
“If we stand together we believe we can achieve a fair contract,” Villegas said. “This march is just to signify that we’re serious and that this is important to us.”
