New Haven Independent

As usual, the two sides had a different take Friday on a settlement they reached related to last year’s dispute over an organizing drive among 1,800 blue-collar workers.

Yale-New Haven Hospital agreed to pay District 1199 of SEUI Healthcare $2 million as a penalty for violating a city-brokered agreement over how to behave during the run-up to a unionizing election.

The hospital decided to pay the money rather than proceed with a legal challenge over how much it owed the union. “We thought it was important to resolve everything once and for all,” hospital spokesman Vin Petrini said Friday. “Hopefully it closes the book on this chapter.”

“We could have continued to contest this. We didn’t think that was in anyone’s interest. We wanted to put this behind us.”

“Today is a new beginning,” SEIU Vice-President Rob Baril (pictured at the top of the story) said before a press conference Friday outside City Hall. He said the union will use the $2 million to continue its 10-year effort to organize 1,736 blue-collar Yale-New Haven workers.

“The fight continues. We’re in it for the long haul.”

The Backdrop

The $2 million settlement stems from an October 2007 decision by Margaret M. Kern, an arbitrator Yale-New Haven and SEIU hired to help oversee compliance with an agreement about how to conduct a unionizing election.

In March of 2006 the union and the hospital were gearing up for the unionizing election. At the same time, Yale-New Haven was pushing to get needed city government approvals to build a new world-class $465 million cancer center.

It got government’s approval by agreeing to a code of conduct negotiated by Mayor John DeStefano. The hospital agreed, among other things, not to hold mandatory meetings with workers to intimidate them against joining the union, and not to work with an outside consultant to strategize how to get managers to convince employees to vote no in the election.

Weeks before the election, in December 2006, arbitrator Kern found that Yale-New Haven had broken both those promises, on a wide scale. The election was called off.

The following October she ordered the hospital to pay workers a total of $2.2 million in damages for violating the agreement. The hospital paid.

She also ordered the hospital to pay the union $2.3 million in reimbursement for organizing costs. The hospital challenged that amount. It pushed for the union to provide documentation that it spent that money. The union subsequently raised its claim of reimbursable expenses to 4. 6 million.

The hospital agreed to stop requiring documentation and pay the union $2 million, which it did on Aug. 7.

The Next Steps

SEIU officials said Friday the organizing drive will continue. They still have their office at 129 Church St. Mayor DeStefano joined them at Friday’s press conference on City Hall’s steps and spoke in support of continuing to seek an election “free from threats, free from fear, free from intimidation.”

“This is the first time Yale ever answered to anyone,” hospital worker and union supporter Thomasena Denny (pictured) said at the press conference. “Let’s get this union rolling.”

It’s unclear what the union’s specific next steps will be. No cards are currently being gathered to call a new election. SEIU lead organizer David Pickus wasn’t offering any clues.

“The hospital has shown itself not to be fair. We we’re not interested in telegraphing to them the stuff we’re doing,” he said.

Hospital spokesman Petrini said Yale-New Haven would still like to see a secret ballot union election. The union had pushed for arbitrator Kern to order recognition of the union instead because of damage done by its violation of the code of conduct agreement; the arbitrator declined.

Meanwhile, Yale-New Haven’s Smilow cancer hospital is under construction. It’s scheduled to open in 2009. Petrini said the cancer center and related construction “represent more than $700 million in active construction projects, provide hundreds of new jobs and inject more than $1 billion in the local economy.”

The Car Crash

As union supporter Rev. Henry Morris, spoke on City Hall’s steps Friday, a sudden crash was heard on Church Street. It was a car crash. According to Officer Dave Coppola, who responded immediately along with Officer Jeffrey Fletcher, the driver of an All-Sport 4WD pulled out of a lane directly into a Nissan driven by Amber Mackenzie. A fire and ambulance crew arrived to check on a baby in the back seat of the Nissan; the baby turned out to be fine. Click on the play arrow to watch the All-Sport (whose front bumper fell off in the accident) claim the accident wasn’t his fault.

Her smashed side door.

His front.