About 340 employees of McKenzie-Willamette Hospital in Springfield have walked off the job in a three-day strike in an attempt to avert cuts in benefits from their employer, the for-profit hospital giant Community Health Systems.
The strike is focused on the hospital chain’s initial offer of a sub-inflation 1% pay increase paired with a 9% increase in healthcare costs for employees, according to members of Service Employees International Union Local 49, which represents caregivers at McKenzie-Willamette and eight other hospitals in Oregon.
“Workers felt like they had no other choice,” said Ken Charpie, a laboratory technician and SEIU member at the Springfield hospital. “When the company isn’t taking care of its employees it makes it a difficult environment for patient care.”
The hospital announced Wednesday that it was willing to give workers a single wage increase of 2.75% effective Nov. 1. But employees have gone without any wage increase since their old contract expired, and the new contract would only last a little over a year -- through December 2015 -- before contract negotiations must begin anew. The union proposal has asked for a 2.5% increase for three years running.
Bigger than the battle over wages is the issue over healthcare rates. McKenzie-Willamette wants employee premiums to increase by 9% if they stay in the standard health plan, or realize a 4% hike if they sign up with the so-called “Choice” plan, which likely uses a more limited network. Hospital spokeswoman Jana Waterman said in a statement that the nurses, represented by the Oregon Nurses Association, had agreed to the reformatted health offerings a year ago, but SEIU members claim they knew little about the details of these plans.
“The rise in healthcare costs would completely wipe out any raise,” Charpie said. “They have withheld important information about the health plan.”
SEIU has also filed three complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing the hospital of unfair labor practices, including barring new employees from meeting with union representatives, keeping tabs on when workers have union meetings and withholding detailed information about the structure of the new employee health insurance plans.
“The hospital is forcing caregivers to sign in and out when they do union-related activities,” said Jesse Stemmler, an SEIU Local 49 labor representative.
During the strike, the hospital is still operating, staffed with temporary workers to fill in for the certified nursing assistants, laboratory technicians, housekeepers and food service workers involved.
“All areas of the hospital are staffed with qualified healthcare professionals, including the hospital’s own employees who are not represented by the union, many who crossed the picket line this morning, and experienced temporary replacement workers,” said Waterman.
The Springfield hospital posted an $11.7 million profit in 2012, with a profit margin of 9.3 percent, although those figures were down sharply from the year before.
The strike is set to last until 6:30 a.m. Friday at McKenzie-Willamette, where hospital workers have gone without a contract since the end of 2013. The last contract was also hammered out after significant strife, including a one-day strike in 2010. But the rancor between management and labor at McKenzie-Willamette at the end of the last two contracts has been a fairly recent development, proceeded by 25 years of calm labor relations.
Charpie said the bad relations occurred only after the for-profit Community Health Systems took over the hospital from the previous owner, Texas-based Triad Health Services, in 2007. “There is definitely a culture of fear that they try to instill in workers in order to limit union activity.”
Community Health Systems is headquartered a world away from Oregon in Franklin, Tenn., on the sprawling outskirts of Nashville. While unions maintain a strong and even growing presence in Oregon, Tennessee might be the most hostile state to unions in the entire country, where leading Republican politicians went so far as to intervene with a misinformation campaign to prevent the United Auto Workers from organizing an auto plant, despite tacit support for unionization from the automaker, Volkswagen.
All but two of Oregon’s hospitals are non-profit with an obligation to provide a certain amount of charity to the community. Community Health Systems, on the other hand, has been able to dominate much of the South with a for-profit business model.
McKenzie-Willamette is the only Oregon hospital in the chain, although Community Health Systems owns four hospitals in Washington, including two in Yakima and two in Spokane.
Emails to Springfield legislators were not returned, although Sen. Lee Beyer spoke out in support of the SEIU workers at an April rally: “Caregivers deserve a fair contract. It is simply immoral for a healthcare provider like McKenzie-Willamette to not provide affordable healthcare to caregivers.”
Chris can be reached at [email protected]
Correction: The original article misstated the name of the hospital's parent company, Community Health Systems.
