A long-awaited arbitrator’s ruling on the Yale-New Haven Hospital labor dispute slaps the hospital with a $4.5 million fine — including $2.2 million to be distributed among voting employees — while rejecting the union’s call to bypass a secret ballot election.
Both sides claimed vindication in the ruling, issued Tuesday by Margaret M. Kern, a neutral arbitrator chosen jointly by the hospital and District 1199 of the Service Employees International Union to adjudicate disputes leading up to the aborted union election scheduled for last December.
The union, which has long been trying to organize the hospital’s 1,800 blue-collar workers, praised the hefty fine.
The hospital, which had threatened not to acknowledge the arbitrator’s conclusions because she had exceeded an agreed-upon deadline, instead celebrated the ruling because the arbitrator did not sustain the union’s request for a bargaining order.
Click here to read the 47-page ruling.
In the ruling, Kern concluded that “the employer’s conduct here was a methodical dismantling of the terms and commitments of the election principles agreement,” the hard-fought agreement brokered by Mayor John DeStefano between the city, hospital and union. She details various ways in which the hospital undermined workers’ chances at having a fair election.
Fine Slapped
SEIU spokesman Bill Meyerson heralded the ruling for its “unprecedented monetary damages”: Kern ordered the hospital to reimburse the union in the amount of $2,297,676 for the money the union spent in organizing efforts, only to have the election called off because the hospital had broken federal labor laws.
Hospital Spokesman Vin Petrini said the hospital would review and possibly challenge that fine, which he said included a half-million dollars the union spent on a negative ad campaign that violated rules laid out by the elections principals agreement.
Kern also ordered the hospital to pay another $2,225,131 to eligible voters, a sum equal to the money it spent on anti-union consultants, in violation of the election principals agreement. That means each employee eligible to vote in the union election, even those who spoke out against the union, will get almost $1,300 each in cash.
Is it full compensation? Not quite, said Meyerson. “Full compensation would be winning the process by which workers would have the right to freely and fairly choose to unionize.”
No Card Check Neutrality
To the union’s disappointment and hospital’s glee, Kern declined to approve the union’s request for a bargaining order that would have ordered the hospital to recognize the union based on a card count. Kern agreed that a majority of the 1,736 eligible members had signed union authorization cards, but she said she did not have the authority to issue a bargaining order.
Petrini praised Kern’s conclusion that there was no basis for card-check neutrality. While the union withdrew its petition for an election as a result of the hospital’s anti-union activity, the hospital in a rare move has petitioned for a new election on behalf of its workers through the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB will rule on the possible new election after the hospital finishes complying with a 60-day posting period it was ordered to undertake for allegedly violating labor laws.
“At the end of the day, we’re pleased that our employees will potentially vote on this,” said Petrini. “Hopefully this will close the book on these issues, and put it behind us so our employees can” decide their own future through a new, secret-ballot election.
Holy Christ! Those are some hefty dollars they are throwing around there. $2.3 million to organize a hospital into a union? $2.2 million in anti-union consultants? Why was this money needed either way just to ask employees if they wanted a union? And we wonder why health care is so expensive!