Publication Date: Wednesday, December 14, 2005
One-day strikes hit Stanford, hospitals
One-day strikes hit Stanford, hospitals
(December 14, 2005) Unions gain sympathy, but hospitals claim support fizzled
by Don Kazak
About 20 workers picked up placards shortly after 5 a.m. Monday and began chanting and walking in a circle near the Stanford Hospital emergency room entrance under the pre-dawn glare of lights from six television news cameras.
That began the one-day strike against the university and Stanford and Lucile Packard Children's hospitals.
About 1,300 university workers and 1,400 at the two hospitals are members of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 715, which has separate labor contracts with the university and the two hospitals.
Both groups held separate -- but mutually supportive -- one-day walkouts.
SEIU's contract with the hospitals expired Nov. 13 and the union membership authorized a strike vote Nov. 22, prompting a federal mediator to be called in. The Nov. 22 vote called for an open-ended strike, but SEIU announced late last Thursday that it would instead last 24 hours to coincide with a one-day strike SEIU's university workers also planned.
The strike "is a last resort to get management to come back to the table by withholding our work," said Chuck Fonseca, a nursing assistant at Stanford Hospital for 16 years and one of the pre-dawn picketers.
The hospitals have offered pay raises of 12 percent over three years under a new contract while the union sought 29 percent in raises over three years. The hospitals have declined to return to the negotiating table, although possible dates for a resumption of talks are being exchanged, said Greg Pullman, spokesman for SEIU's hospital workers.
Hospital officials, who expected a longer walk-out, said the strike wouldn't affect patient care.
Only "a handful" of outside workers were brought in to replace strikers, according to Cynthia Haines, senior vice president of Packard Hospital. Other hospital employees performed the functions of striking workers.
"We've had contingency plans in place," Haines said.
Later that day, hospital spokesperson Sarah Staley released a statement that almost 60 percent of SEIU workers at Stanford and Lucile Packard Children's hospitals scheduled to work actually crossed picket lines and were on the job.
She said that 511 members of the union were scheduled to work and 301 -- 58.9 percent -- showed up.
"We don't believe that is the case," Greg Pullman, spokesman for SEIU hospital workers, countered. "We don't have any evidence of that."
As the Weekly went to press, the university was expected to calculate how many workers showed up for work Monday in spite of the strike.
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