NLRB rules McKenzie-Willamette Hospital broke labor law
The Springfield facility is
part of America’s second-
biggest for-profit hospital
chain
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
EUGENE — Alongside timeless
workplace mysteries like “what do
managers do?” there’s a new mystery
at McKenzie-Willamette hospital in
Springfield, Oregon: What on earth do
its human resource managers do?
For-profit McKenzie-Willamette is
part of Tennessee-headquartered
Community Health Systems (CHS),
the nation’s largest publicly-traded
hospital company. And federal labor
law — something you’d expect HR
professionals to know — requires the
hospital to bargain in good faith with
Service Employees International
Union (SEIU) Local 49, which repre-
sents 300 support workers there.
When contract negotiations began
Oct. 17, 2013, the union asked for
some basic and mostly pretty mun-
dane information. It should have been
routine. Instead it took HR 40 days to
hand over a retirement plan summary,
55 days to provide an employee list
PAGE 16
with pay rates, 90 days to disclose to-
tal annual payroll for unit employees,
and 117 days to provide current job
descriptions. HR never did provide
eight other pieces of information —
including hire dates, health insurance
enrollment dates, and the most recent
retirement plan annual report.
Local 49 cried foul, and the labor
law referees at the National Labor Re-
lations Board (NLRB) agreed. In an
“unfair labor practice” complaint is-
sued March 31, the federal agency
says McKenzie-Willamette Hospital
“has been failing and refusing to bar-
gain collectively with the exclusive
collective bargaining representative of
its employees,” in violation of federal
labor law. The agency set a July 8 date
for the hospital to explain itself before
a federal administrative law judge.
That’s a familiar ritual for CHS —
a repeat offender with one of the most
egregious records of labor law viola-
tions of any employer in the country.
Within the last year, federal courts
have issued at least three cease-and-
desist orders at CHS hospitals in Cali-
fornia and Ohio for threatening, ha-
rassing and terminating union
supporters, and for refusal to bargain
in good faith.
Members of SEIU Local 49 picket outside McKenzie-Willamette Hospital
April 17 to protest extreme stalling in contract negotiations. The National
Labor Relations Board has ruled that the for-profit hospital chain's "bad-
faith bargaining" violates federal labor law.
On April 14, the NLRB in Wash-
ington, D.C., ruled that CHS miscon-
duct at a San Diego area hospital “in-
fected the core of the bargaining
process to such an extent” that a court
order to bargain wouldn’t be enough:
The hospital must reimburse the union
for six months of bargaining expenses
— a sanction the NLRB has used only
eight times. The agency also extended
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
union certification for a year, and or-
dered CHS to provide the information
the California Nurses Association re-
quested — way back in August 2012.
CHS has 87,000 employees at 208
hospitals in 29 states. Only about
8,000 of them are union members.
“We currently believe that our la-
bor relations are good,” the company
declared in its most recent annual re-
port to shareholders.
Many union employees would
likely disagree with that assessment.
Members of SEIU 1199NW at Val-
ley Hospital in Spokane, Washington,
waged a one-day strike Dec. 4, after
which CHS locked them out of their
jobs for two days. That came a day af-
ter members of California Nurses As-
sociation waged one-day strikes at
CHS hospitals in Wilkes-Barre, Penn-
sylvania, and Watsonville and
Barstow, California. CNA members
also picketed hospitals in Massillon,
Ohio and Ronceverte, West Virginia.
In Springfield, SEIU Local 49 re-
ported close to a hundred workers and
supporters took part in a noisy infor-
mational picket April 17 outside
McKenzie-Willamette. Local 49
spokesperson Felisa Hagins says bar-
gaining has been unbelievably slow,
with hospital negotiators unwilling or
unable to meet more than once or
twice a month. Local 49’s contract at
McKenzie-Willamette — which cov-
ers medical assistants, certified nurs-
ing assistants, medical technicians,
phlebotomists, and housekeepers —
expired Dec. 31, 2013.
MAY 2, 2014