356 Psychiatric Workers, Nurses to Change Unions

A group of 356 nurses and psychiatric technicians in Ventura County have overwhelmingly voted to abandon the county’s largest union of public workers and join a statewide nurses association.

By a 3-1 margin, the nurses and psychiatric technicians, now members of Public Employees Assn. of Ventura County, voted to become members of the California Nurses Assn., according to results released Wednesday.

“The nurses were ready to empower themselves,” said Judith Overmyer, a nurse at Ventura County Medical Center who helped spearhead the move. “They were wanting professional representation and CNA is a proven leader in representing nurses. We feel this . . . will give us a significantly increased influence on patient care issues.”

Of the 261 ballots cast by mail in the past three weeks, 74% voted to change to the new union, while 26% voted to stay with the county union, which is part of the Service Employees International Union Local 998.

The medical workers will formally switch from the 4,000-member county union to the 28,000-member statewide nurses union after the state Civil Service Commission makes it official at a meeting next week, Overmyer said.

The county’s nurses and psychiatric technicians work for Ventura County Medical Center, Ventura County Public Health Services and Ventura County Mental Health Services.

This will be the first time that the nurses union will represent the county’s 60 psychiatric technicians at the bargaining table. Nurses union spokeswoman Jennifer Watson said the needs and interests of the county’s 60 technicians are very similar to those of nurses.

“We want to help the nurses in Ventura County . . . to have a strong voice in professional practice issues, staffing issues and patient care issues,” Watson said. “The public employees’ association gave very limited attention to nursing practice issues and patient care issues.”

The vote comes after nurses have voiced frustration with the county union, which represents workers ranging from secretaries to tree cutters, and with the personal style of the union’s executive director, Barry Hammitt.

Hammitt has been accused by some nurses of being less than professional and nasty at times, in his personal style. Hammitt was unavailable for comment Wednesday.

Nurses say the county union has not fought hard enough to look after their interests, such as pushing to keep sufficient staff levels at public health facilities. As a result, they say, the quality of patient care has declined.

Watson said the nurses association faces similar problems with budget-strapped public hospitals and county facilities everywhere. Budget cuts, she said, can often “mean cuts in the quality of patient care . . . (and) shifting nursing functions to lower-paid, less-qualified personnel.”

Diane Seyl, a public health nurse who coordinates the county’s AIDS program, said nurses in Ventura County need stronger representation than they have been getting.

“The staffing is very tight right now, and with the budget issues that the Board of Supervisors is dealing with now, we don’t know how that will affect what is happening here,” Seyl said.

Seyl said staff morale has also dipped. In addition to low staffing levels, Seyl said nurses resent changes in the county’s reimbursement policy for textbooks and college tuition. The program now allows nurses to be paid back for either undergraduate or graduate work, but not for both as before, she said.

Overmyer said the nurses union will stand behind the county workers in day-to-day business but will not represent the group at the bargaining table until June, 1993, when the current 18-month contract expires.

“We feel we’ll have much more responsiveness with CNA than we have had with SEIU in the past,” Seyl said, who added that she is “very pleased, relieved, happy” about the switch.