City Hospital Workers Get Locked Out

City Hospital Workers Get Locked Out
Sutter Health Takes Action Day After Strike

By KIM PERRY
Contributing Writer
Friday, December 3, 2004
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STAFF/BLAIRE BAILY

Sofia Griffing-Coming, age 5, participates in a candlelight vigil to support Alta Bates Medical Center staff members, including both of her parents, who are on strike.
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Sacramento-based hospital chain Sutter Health yesterday locked out hundreds of Berkeley hospital workers—along with thousands of other Bay Area caregivers—after Wednesday’s one-day workers’ strike at 13 Northern California Sutter hospital campuses.

The statewide medical service provider plans to continue its worker lockout for the next three days.

Strikers will go without pay for each day off the job.

About 300 strikers from many Sutter hospitals attended a candlelight vigil at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center’s Ashby Avenue campus to protest the lockout.

Union officials have arranged a number of activities throughout the next three days of the shut-out to condemn Sutter Health’s actions.

“A lot of healthcare givers are irate that Sutter hospitals would lock out staff that has 20 or 30 years of service to the community,” said Charles Idelson, a spokesperson for the California Nurses Association, which is co-organizing the strikes with Service Employees International Union Local 250.

Nancy Hoagland, 59, a nurse at Alta Bates and a Berkeley resident, said her main concern with the hospital is its high patient-to-staff ratio, which results in less nurse time with patients.

“The law has been compromised by Sutter,” she said.

Sutter Health’s anticipated four-day lockout came in response to 7,000 caregivers, ranging from registered nurses to bedside attendants, who went on strike because of stalled contract negotiations.

Union officials say there are two proposals Sutter Health refuses to discuss: the creation of a committee to determine adequate hospital staffing and a fund to train and upgrade staff, said John Borsos, vice president of SEIU Local 250.

Alta Bates hospitals are running as usual, with about 60 percent of nurses and 56 percent of non-nursing staff continuing to work along with 600 replacement workers, said Carolyn Kemp, spokesperson for Alta Bates Summit Medical Center.

Prior to the strike, Alta Bates had arranged for close to 800 workers to replace the anticipated strikers.

“The hospital can’t close down or walk away for just one day, which our workers have done,” Kemp said.

The California Nurses Association this week filed an unfair labor practice charge against Alta Bates citing the lockout as “illegal,” Idelson said. Registered nurses legally are allowed to walkout during contract negotiations, he said.

The complaint is one of six pending investigations that have been filed in the past weeks against Alta Bates. SEIU Local 250 filed the other charges against Alta Bates, said Michael Leong, assistant to the regional director for the National Labor Relations Board. The board’s investigation should take four to nine weeks, he said.

Kemp said she was not familiar with the complaint.

Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown came out in support of hospital workers yesterday morning at the Alta Bates Summit Campus in Oakland, and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors held a hearing yesterday to take testimony about the strike.

As of press time, the board had not made a decision on how to respond to Sutter Health’s situation.

Contact Kim Perry at newsdesk [at] dailycal.org.