New Haven Independent

The charges and counter-charges flew Thursday just two weeks before an election that has been nine years in the making — to decide whether the people who clean the floors and the rooms and assist patients at the city’s largest hospital will be represented by a union, District 1199 of the service employees union.

For many years that has been a bitter, public fight. If victorious, the hospital’s workers will create the largest new union in the region since Yale University’s pink-collar workers formed Local 34 of the university employees in 1983. The bitterness reached a peak earlier this year as the battle prevented the construction of a new $430 million cancer center at Yale. But then it quieted down: As part of a politician-brokered deal to allow the cancer to move forward, both the union and the hospital agreed in March to prepare a code of conduct for carrying out the election campaign. The conduct removed the dispute from public view and appeared to have eliminated much of the rancor.

Until now.

Or more precisely, until about the past week, the eleventh hour of the drive. The election is set for Dec. 20 and 21.

Since the announcement of that date, organizers charge, the hospital has thrown out the agreement and started pressuring employees to oppose the union through high-pressure staff meetings, harassment, and false claims about the union — all tactics disallowed under the “Hospital and Union Representation Election Principles Agreement” signed on April 13.

The union first made the charges Monday at a press conference with local pro-labor ministers. When it was noted that no actual workers appeared at the event, the union organized another press conference for Thursday afternoon on the mezzanine floor of 129 Church Street, the building housing the drive’s offices. Five hospital workers who volunteer as union organizers detailed their accusations of hospital strong-arming.

Willie Tart (pictured at left next to patient care associate Renita Brown) works in the environmental services department. Every day for the past week his department’s workers have been called into mandatory meetings about topics unrelated to the union drive, Tart said. After about 10 minutes a manager proclaims that now the subject will turn to the union. The manager tells workers they are free to leave at that point. But workers don’t feel free to leave, Tart said. “If the person gets up, that person knows that he or she will become a target” as an identified union supporter.

Minnie DaCosta (pictured at the top of this article) told of being called to similar meetings. Sometimes they’re not mandatory; rather a manager calls and urges her and others to come in to attend meetings that may start out as dealing with other subjects before turning to the organizing drive. The meetings feature accusations that a union will deprive workers of the ability to speak to supervisors, take time off for doctors’ appointments, or the ability to obtain pay bonuses they receive now, she and others claimed.

That all falls afoul of the agreement’s specification that “The Hospital will not threaten Eligible Voters with loss benefits, wages or less favorable working conditions by unionizing,” the speakers claimed. Both sides are also supposed to refrain from “disparaging” the other side in conversations with workers, making threats, or being un-“factual.”

Shirmont Little spoke of speaking with sympathetic colleagues in the psychiatric union where he’s a patient care associate, only to see the workers turn anti-union after captive meetings or threats from managers. “It’s scary. People have to work every day. They depend on Yale for their livelihoods,” said Little, whose mother also works at Yale-New Haven. Click on the play arrow to watch him describe his experiences.

Union spokesman Bill Meyerson described a sudden pattern of “massive,” “systematic” violations of the conduct agreement. “The frequency and the scope of the behavior have increased hundredfold in the last week and a half,” he said. “The prospect of a fair election at Yale-New Haven Hospital is in jeopardy.”

Hospital spokesman Vin Petrini dismissed all the union’s accusations.

“Absolutely untrue,” he said after the press conference. He said he is “not aware” of the meetings the union members described with managers.

“We certainly have voluntary meetings,” Petrini said. “It’s not anything that’s prohibited by the agreement. We feel employees need to hear both sides of the debate. If there’s an opportunity for voluntary dialogue, it’s not defined as a captive meeting.”

Does the hospital consider it permissible to invite staffers to a mandatory meeting about other subjects, then turn to union topics with the offer to allow people to leave?

“I have not known of this concern,” Petrini said. “If there is a concern, there is a process by which this can be adjudicated.”

A Busy Arbitrator

Petrini was referring to one of the strongest aspects of the agreement: the appointment of an arbitrator chosen by both the union and the hospital to settle disputes quickly over allegations of misconduct by either side. That arbitrator has suddenly gotten busy — a sign of how the pacific landscape has morphed into a battleground again.

The union has filed some 50 complaints along the lines of those discussed at Thursday’s conference. Now the hospital has started doing the same. Petrini said the hospital considers Thursday’s press conference, and Monday’s with the clergy, a violation of the promise in the agreement not to “disparage” the other side.

To date, the hospital has prevailed on one complaint against the union for intimidating a worker, according to both sides. The union has prevailed on “eight or nine” complaints, according to Petrini; they were “minor,” he claimed. He said the arbitrator has dismissed 39 others. (Some are pending.)

The two sides even disagree now about the buttons and stickers hospital workers and managers wear on their lapels.

Union worker/organizers Thursday complained about stickers distributed by management asking workers if they “can afford” $500 to $700 a year in dues.

Most workers would pay less, far less, as low as $200 a year, according to Meyerson. An employee would have to work full time and earn $14 an hour to pay $400 a year, and most employees don’t earn even that much, he said. Therefore, he argued, the stickers defy the promise to run a “factual” campaign devoid of misleading claims about the union.

Petrini “absolutely” disagreed. “The issue of whether or not employees would have to pay dues… that’s part of being a union member. That’s truthful.”

Does the hospital use the $500 to $700 number? “We’re not going to get into this ‘he said, she said’ thing,” he said. The union can bring those complaints to an arbitrator, he said, adding, “This is not a neutrality agreement.”

The unions’ pins?

DaCosta was wearing two of them. Check them out in the photo at the top of this article.

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