New Haven Independent

At its meeting in City Hall Monday night, the Board of Aldermen officially joined the chorus of community members condemning the hospital for flouting federal law and a labor agreement concerning 1,800 of its blue-collar workers who are trying to organize. Last week, a neutral arbitrator’s blistering report about the hospital led the National Labor Relations Board to postpone the scheduled Dec. 20-21 union election. The arbitrator’s findings led the union and leading figures in town to conclude that the hospital had engaged in such coercion as to make a fair election impossible. (Click here for more background, and clergy’s response earlier Monday).

Aldermanic remonstration came in two forms: One, A proposal to bring hospital leaders before the board to answer aldermanic questions about their “betrayal.” Two, a resolution condemning the hospital’s abuse of workers’ rights, prompting a debate over whether aldermen had the right to intervene. The second resolution passed. The first was sent to committee for a future vote.

Feet to the Fire

Goldfield, the board’s president and usually one of the more moderate aldermanic voices on labor issues, sent off a seething proposal calling for “a hearing on the unlawful and damaging actions by the administration of Yale-New Haven Hospital.”

He called for YNHH President/CEO Borgstrom to testify before the board on “the implications of the arbitrator’s ruling on labor peace in this community and the trustworthiness of an institution that has regular dealings with this body.”

Two members of the hospital board of directors, Yale President Rick Levin and, through his editorial page, New Haven Register Publisher Kevin Walsh, have already come out in public against the hospital. Goldfield asked for testimony from the remaining members of the board “who have not already issued public statements.”

Borgstrom (pictured), until now silent on the matter, wrote a letter apologizing for violations, but taking issue with part of the arbitrator’s ruling.

“I want you to hear from me directly that I sincerely regret any violation of the Agreement or the National Labor Relations Act that may have occurred,” she wrote in a letter addressed to hospital staff (“Dear Fellow Employee”) and distributed to the Board by Aldermen’s staff Monday.

In an interview, Goldfield said these violations were not simple misgivings, but a purposefully lawbreaking anti-union campaign. “It was a tactic “” you get up to the last moment and bam, you can overwhelm the arbitrator.” The bulk of the union’s 200 complaints occurred within the last two weeks.

In her letter, Borgstrom denied the hospital’s violations “” including holding captive audience meetings with at least 165 employees “” were an intentionally subversive tactic: “I believe our managers were trying to do the right thing,” she wrote. But “I want you to know that as soon as it became clear that voluntary meetings were being held in a way that some employees felt pressured to attend, managers were advised not to schedule meetings in this matter.”

She took issue with the arbitrator’s ruling that having the meetings on work time was impermissible. She called for a secret ballot election, not a card-check process, which Mayor John DeStefano and state legislators have advocated.

East Rock Alderman Ed Mattison called Borgstrom’s letter “not satisfying.” “It was far too timid, and failed to recognize the breadth of the violations.”

To Condemn, Or Not To Condemn?

In a pre-meeting strategy session open to the public, aldermen butted heads over a second Goldfield resolution to “condemn YNHH’s actions as documented by the arbitrator in the strongest possible terms.”

Hill Alderwoman Dolores Colón saw the need to intervene in a power struggle. “We have to shed light on what the hospital has been doing, otherwise the rich will get away with whatever they’ve been doing, just get away with a slap on the hand.”

“The process is broken,” chimed in Westville Alderman Tom Lehtonen, referring to the historic labor peace treaty the city and aldermen helped broker after years of strife.

Downtown Alderwoman Bitsie Clark took issue with that stance. She saw the arbitrator’s ruling as proof that the process worked. “I do not believe that the aldermen should inject themselves at this point. I think the hospital did a terrible thing, and the arbitrator told them that.”

“I cannot make myself vote for this because I feel that the process is going [forward].”

Goldfield, too fired up to wait his turn to speak, said “the process could not be upheld” because of the hospital’s actions.

After the meeting, he drew a distinction: The process was designed to handle occasional incidents, such as when a union organizer was found guilty of getting into a fight with an employee, and was dismissed. But the hospital “took advantage of the process” by overloading the arbitrator with complaints to investigate.

On the aldermanic floor, Hill Alderman Jorge Perez agreed “the process didn’t work.” The agreement was designed to allow for “speed bumps,” not “a cement wall.”

“It’s just something that happens, it comes with the unions,” countered Quinnipiac Heights Alderman Robert Lee. Lee suggested the election take place anway, violations or not.

The resolution passed, with Clark voting “no” and Lee and three others abstaining.

SEIU/1199 organizer Bill Meyerson, joined by rows of union supporters, embraced the resolution and the idea that the process didn’t work. “If the process had worked, we would have had a fair election.”

Mayoral spokesman Rob Smuts said the mayor planned to sign both of Goldfield’s proposals.

As Goldfield passed by on his way out the hall, YNHH spokesman Vin Petrini reached out to shake his hand. “We’ll figure out a way to pull this together,” Petrini said.

Petrini said he’d issued an open invitation to union leaders to meet with hospital higher-ups and talk about a remedy. But he made one thing clear: “We would like to do it within the parameters of the existing agreement.”