At the heart of the impasse is the issue of nurse-to-patient ratios. The union is calling for ratios similar to the ones recently mandated by the California Legislature, and the hospitals want none.
"At these two hospitals some nurses are responsible for eight, nine, 10 patients at a time!" says Jane McAlevey, executive director of SEIU Local 1107. "That's dangerous. And that's not what nurses signed up for."
In a statement released by Valley Health System, which operates the two hospitals and which states it will not carry out its negotiations through the media, hospital officials said: "We made significant first economic offers, but the SEIU failed to respond to those offers."
The money is not the important thing, say the VHS nurses, who were given the highest wages in the Valley with their 2004 contract (between $22 and $31 an hour). "It's about improving standards," says McAlevey. "It's about improving patient care and nurse support ... and letting nurses feel like nurses again."
Last week, generals from each side—McAlevey, and Larry Arnold, a lawyer from a union-busting firm in California hired by VHS—continued to meet to no avail. Both sides have grown not only more robust in their positions but also more uncompromising, each side strengthened in its determination by the disgust they've felt with the other's actions.
For example:
• In recent weeks, two of the union's nurses were terminated at their respective hospitals, and rumors of a forthcoming strike have surfaced.
• In mid-October, there was a mass filing of staffing complaints with the Nevada Bureau of Licensure against the two hospitals, accusing them of providing inadequate and perilous patient care.
• On October 5, officials from VHS, a subsidiary of Universal Health Services in Pennsylvania, rallied in front of the SEIU Local 1107 headquarters, delivering to their enemies an anti-union petition signed by a battalion of 1,500 VHS caregivers, staff, and physicians in solidarity.
• In September, the union launched from a press conference a report card on patient care that marked Valley and Desert Springs hospitals with failing grades (and that gave the Catholic Healthcare West hospitals, which had just ratified its contract with SEIU, top marks).
• In June, Valley and Desert Springs banned union staff members from the hospitals' premises, and escorted several out with the assistance of Metro. McAlevey was struck with a lifetime ban.
"It's been disgusting, this war," says McAlevey, who's worked on labor and social issues for most of her adult life. "I've never seen anything like it."
It had been brewing for years. Notorious union-busting consultant Brent Yessin was hired by VHS in January 2006, when the two hospitals' contracts with nurses gave up, but the union says agreements were made in the summer of 2005 to bring him in. In September of that year, 39 nurses at Desert Springs made news when they were suspended from work for wearing SEIU pins on their uniforms. In 2003, Desert Springs tried without success to rid themselves of the union, and in 1999, when SEIU was defying the medical field's historical resistance to unions, they and Valley led an unsuccessful charge to keep unions out of hospitals.
And right now, in November 2006, the two hospitals are feeling more pressure than ever, for Sunrise Medical Center and St. Rose Dominican Hospital have ratified their respective contracts with their nurses, in essence acquiescing to the union's proposals for increased staffing, restricted floating among nurses and improved retirement plans. And UMC is rumored to be well on its way to ratifying, as well.
The Battle Strategies
Officials from VHS, which employs 4,000 health-care professionals, could not be reached for this story, but in press statements they have said that the SEIU oftentimes takes information out of context and propagandizes it for its bargaining objectives. "The SEIU presents inaccurate pictures," one such statement says, "and it is neither qualified nor competent to assess health care data."
Moreover, VHS calls the tactics used by the union to "harass hospitals" and gain leverage in negotiations "deplorable" —such as the massive complaint filing in October, and the report card.
Conversely, the union feels the hospitals' tactics are just as deplorable.
Special procedures nurse Christina Schofield, one of SEIU's nurses recently fired, says that Yessin tries to intimidate and oppress the nursing staff. She says:
"Six to eight months ago, the union-busters came in and started holding these mandatory meetings where they pulled nurses away from their patients and filled them with anti-union propaganda. Then they'd send around petitions for the nurses to deny allegiance to the union. Five of them in two weeks, each two hours long. They never let me attend them because I kept asking: ‘Who's taking care of the patients during these meetings?'
"Then they started with the one-on-one meetings, where they for instance would pull an international nurse inside, huddle around her, and ask her: ‘You like your visa? You want to keep it, don't you?'"
Schofield, who says she had never had a write-up prior to the "countless" formal reprimands she received this year ("for things like retrieving a Diet Coke from the ER"), says that management made an extra effort to suppress union literature, and posted their own propaganda every day with yellow fliers on the walls. Moreover, she says, she had to get used to security following her out on her breaks.
"The nurses are terrified now," she says. "They know this regime's threats are not empty, because, well, they fired me, didn't they?"
VHS officials did not respond to efforts for comment.
The Casualties
One patient, Venita Smith, who had just completed a four-day recovery at a VHS hospital, the entire time in an ER hallway, says: "There simply weren't enough nurses."
The hospitals say it's a shame the nurses are allowing politics to interfere with patient care—which is the principle they say they're fighting for—and the nurses say it has nothing to do with politics—it's the basic necessities of medical care they're after: sufficient staffing, support for nurses and adequate equipment.
"There was an elderly man in radiology who had to sit soaked in his shame because there were no diapers available," says Schofield, a nurse of 17 years before she was terminated.
"Nurses in the ICU on night shift talk about having to care for three to four patients. That's so dangerous! It should be one-to-one with patients in critical condition. Basic nursing care—like brushing patients' teeth, changing their beds, taking them for walks—it's gone out the window because there are not enough nurses. My own mother was admitted to Desert Springs four months ago. I came into her room one time and she was in tears—crying because her call light had been on for over a half hour and no one responded."
"Better [nurse-to-patient] ratios won't solve all these problems, but it's a start," says Schofield. "It's a commitment to improving standards."
Asked why she's chosen to engage in this brutal fight, Valley nurse Autumn Montoya says: "Patients are depending on us to speak out."
Valley and Desert Springs, combined, maintain more than 1,000 beds, and locals comprise 90 percent of their patients. VHS warns the public to be cautious when it takes in information from the union, and that "in many instances, we are resisting the SEIU's demands that would actually restrict both the hospitals and our nurses' ability to provide care."