Tuesday March 4, 2008, 3:36 pm

The article that I have posted is an op-ed, the most recent article in a long series, obviously long because the workers at St Joseph's Health System have been trying to organize a union since 2004.

All of their demonstrations have been covered by local California press throughout Sept, Oct, Nov and December of 2007. You can read them all on the Justice at St Joseph's Health System (SJHS)site :
http://www.justiceatstjhs.org/news.html

Don't miss their interactive "SJHS Anti-Union Timeline":
http://www.justiceatstjhs.org/timeline.html

In the article that I've posted, author, professor and former US Secretary of Labour, Robert B. Reich is writing in reaction to the union stalmate at St Joseph's Health System hospitals as described in the following:


LABOR DISPUTE DIVIDES RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY
Priests back workers at hospital chain run by order of nuns
Victoria Colliver, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Labor organizing can be tense under the best of circumstances, but in bucolic Sonoma County, one such effort has escalated to a theological debate of sorts, pitting Catholic nuns against their ecclesiastic brethren in a dispute involving labor rights, the church's social teachings and a multibillion-dollar business.

On one side are the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, who operate Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital as part of the $3.35 billion St. Joseph Healthcare System, a business that supports their order. On the other are local priests, labor leaders and hospital employees who have accused management of creating an atmosphere of intimidation.

The tension has escalated in recent months, which have been punctuated by marches, vigils and meetings.

For their part, hospital officials say they respect their workers' right to organize and deny any union-busting agenda.

"We support our employees' rights to choose for themselves whether or not they want to have union representation, and we're committed to following federal laws of how our employees go through the process," said Kevin Andrus, spokesman for St. Joseph Health System. Calls for comment by the Sisters of St. Joseph were referred to the system's public relations staff.

The nuns' critics, however, say hospital officials have sought advice from anti-labor firms, required workers to attend mandatory meetings discouraging union support and pressured employees to avoid organizing activity.

And that, they say, is not practicing what the Catholic nuns are supposed to preach.

The church has a long history of supporting labor rights. Catholic leaders, including the Sisters of St. Joseph, have publicly backed workers in such campaigns as the Janitors for Justice, which began in the 1980s. The church also played an integral role in helping resolve the farm workers' disputes of the 1960s and '70s.

"The Catholic Church has been the greatest supporter of the workers' right to unionize," said Monsignor John Brenkle, pastor of St. Helena Catholic Church, who was asked by the local bishop to help mediate the dispute.

"Our tradition has been such, but all of a sudden, when it comes home and we are the ones whose workers want to be unionized," Brenkle said, "it's a little different."

Despite his friendship with Sister Katherine "Kit" Gray, general superior of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange who also chairs the health system's board, Brenkle said he believes the order might be allowing business interests to dominate its decisions.

St. Joseph Health System, based in the Southern California city of Orange, operates 14 hospitals along with nursing homes, hospice care, clinics and doctors groups with operations in California, West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. In Northern California, it runs Santa Rosa Memorial, Petaluma Valley, Queen of the Valley in Napa, Redwood Memorial in Fortuna and St. Joseph in Eureka. In 2006, the system generated $3.35 billion in revenue.

The system is the largest in the state to employ workers who are not represented by the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Workers-West.

The union has made efforts to organize various St. Joseph hospitals around the state, but its latest attempts have been focused on Santa Rosa, with the more recent additional of Petaluma Valley Hospital, along with several hospitals in Orange County.

Brenkle and other local priests have sided with the SEIU-UHW and other religious leaders who support the union. They've joined workers participating in candlelight vigils and marches. The Santa Rosa Diocesan Priests' Council last year adopted a set of guidelines established by the national Conference of Catholic Bishops to ensure fair labor elections and has urged the Sisters of St. Joseph to do the same.

Unlike many other Catholic health systems where members of the founding order have little active role in running the hospitals, members of the Sisters of St. Joseph make up the majority of St. Joseph's board of trustees. Sisters also serve on boards of the individual hospitals.

Several veteran employees of Santa Rosa Memorial remember when the nuns were active on the hospital's floors as nurses and administrators.

"The nuns were very much a presence when I first worked there, and now you don't even see them," said Lori Serrano, a former medical coder who worked at the hospital for 28 years before her job was eliminated and outsourced to a Colorado firm in October. "Everything is now the bottom line. It's just dollars."

Serrano said she loved the work, but that supervisors clearly were anti-union.

"They said the unions would be bad for us and we didn't need it, but I don't see why we don't have the option for a fair election," she said.

After a failed effort by Teamsters in 1999 to organize technical and service workers at Santa Rosa Memorial, workers in 2003 approached SEIU about representing more than 800 workers, including nursing assistants, respiratory therapists, radiology technicians, housekeeping and other staff. Nurses and engineers already are represented by other unions.

Despite a petition with more than 30 percent of the staff supporting a vote, SEIU called off a scheduled election in 2005 because the union feared it had lost support. Workers said they were discouraged from showing union support and were required to attend meetings that presented the union in a negative light.

Rocio Allen, a nursing assistant at Santa Rosa, said she experienced intimidation firsthand when she wore a button in support of the union several years ago. A manager told her she could not wear the button and made her wait while he checked her job status with human resources before allowing her to return to work.

"They preach every worker has a right to justice and dignity, but they do not allow that in their own place," said Allen, adding that she supports a union so workers would have representation in disputes such as firings and schedule changes.

SEIU and workers have filed several complaints against Santa Rosa Memorial with the National Labor Relations Board.

Of three charges filed in recent years, one resulted in a settlement in which the hospital did not admit any wrongdoing, and two were dismissed, said Tim Peck of the NLRB's San Francisco office. One case, which involved a former employee alleging an unfair firing, was dismissed because it was filed after the statute of limitations had expired.

More recently in Southern California, an administrative law judge ruled Dec. 18 to set aside a vote held at St. Mary's Medical Center in Apple Valley in August. Workers at the hospital, which also is operated by St. Joseph's Health System, voted narrowly against representation, but the judge found hospital officials interfered with the process by engaging in intimidation tactics.

Before attempting another vote, union supporters want hospital management to agree to a set of ground rules that would guarantee a free and fair election. A similar hospital operator, Catholic Healthcare West, a 42-hospital system based in San Francisco, has labor agreements with SEIU and other unions that include election ground rules.

But St. Joseph officials have refused, saying such ground rules are unnecessary because guidelines already are established by the NLRB.

"We will move through the election process following NLRB rules and following personal rules of conduct," said Andrus, spokesman for the health system. "It's a time-tested process that has proven to work long term."

The union's position that the NLRB rules are inadequate and the hospital's refusal to budge have created a stalemate. Hoping to resolve the protracted dispute, priests and others have appealed directly to the sisters.

"The religious community very much supports us. They're challenging the sisters to step up and do the right thing here," said Michael Hartnett, a respiratory therapist at Santa Rosa Memorial who was part of a group of workers invited in November to meet with Gray at the system's corporate headquarters.

Harnett said the meeting was cordial but did not result in any changes. "We left the meeting with them telling us it's OK to disagree," he said.

JoAnn Consiglieri, a former Sister of St. Joseph, also met with Gray, whom she found gracious but unmoving.

Consiglieri, who left the order in 1979 and now works as a marriage and family therapist in Santa Rosa, said she has become involved in the labor dispute because she supports workers' rights and believes that is part of Catholic thinking. "My conscience tells me this is not OK," she said. "I believe strongly in Catholic social teachings and these workers need to have a voice."

Joe Fahey, a professor of religious studies at Manhattan College of New York who traveled to Santa Rosa to attend a vigil on Jan. 17 in support of the union, said St. Joseph is not the only Catholic health institution embroiled in union controversy.

Similar disputes are continuing with hospitals affiliated with Resurrection Health Care in the Chicago area and with Providence Health & Services in Oregon.

"Unfortunately, Catholic employers, in many cases, act no different than other employers, even though Catholic social teaching is firmly on the side of the right to form labor unions," said Fahey, founder of a newly formed group, Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice.

At a glance
-- St. Joseph Health System, owned by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, has been locked in a protracted labor dispute with union officials and workers at Santa Rosa Memorial, Petaluma Valley and other hospitals the system.

-- Local pastors from the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa support the hospital workers' right to organize. The diocese last year adopted guidelines by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that call on Catholic hospitals to work with union leaders to establish a mutually agreeable elections process.

-- Union supporters want hospital management to agree to a set of ground rules that would guarantee a free and fair election. St. Joseph officials refuse, saying such ground rules are unnecessary because guidelines already are established by national labor law. No vote is scheduled.

Source: Chronicle research.

Wednesday March 5, 2008, 6:01 am
Thankyou Mark noted