Community Memorial Warns Some Nurses of Pay Cuts in 1998

Community Memorial Hospital told its operating room nursing staff Thursday that they must take a large salary cut, but denied that the cost-cutting measure had anything to do with its costly war with the Ventura County Medical Center.

Hospital administrators called an afternoon meeting to tell the 34 nurses that beginning next January they would lose special pay that for some of them amounts to $10,000 or more a year. Officials said the move was part of a plan that would save the hospital $215,000 a year.

Drawing an angry response from the nurses, hospital officials called a second meeting three hours later to tell the staff that the pay cuts would not go into effect for two years.

They also assured the nurses that the salary reduction--which would come from “incentive pay” that each of the nurses receives for operating room work--had nothing to do with the hospital’s expensive battle with the neighboring medical center.

In the earlier meeting, the nurses had demanded to know if the pay cut was related to the hospital war.

Community Memorial has spent more than $1 million so far on a lawsuit and a political campaign for a March ballot measure to stop the county from building a new $51-million outpatient clinic, which Community Memorial sees as a threat to its business.

“The discussion got very heated,” said one nurse of the earlier meeting. “People got angry. We asked them, ‘Are we funding your lawsuit?’ They just sort of laughed and said no.

“We told them if you go to your attorneys and tell them to take a 20% to 25% pay cut, what do you think they’re going to say?” said the nurse, who asked not to be identified. “If they can’t afford to pay us, then they shouldn’t be spending $2 million on a lawsuit.”

Michael Bakst, executive director of the hospital, did not return phone calls Thursday.

But a Community Memorial spokesman said late Thursday that the nurses’ pay cut and the hospital’s fight with the county were unrelated.

“The idea that the compensation of any employee at CMH having anything to do with the measure or the lawsuit is absolutely false,” said Doug Dowie of the Los Angeles public affairs firm of Fleishman Hilliard. “That has nothing to do with it.”

Instead, he said, competitive pressures have ebbed and Community Memorial Hospital no longer needs to offer the extra pay to attract quality registered nurses. The hospital began paying operating room nurses between $3.25 and $4.25 an hour in extra pay four years ago as part of its incentive program.

But Dowie said that other hospitals no longer offer such pay, and so Community Memorial sees no reason to continue doing so.

“When the competition slacks off, [the hospital] would be prudent to slack off, too,” Dowie said.

He said that hospital management rescinded the memo announcing the pay cut late Wednesday afternoon, not because of media inquiries, but rather to cushion the economic blow to hospital staff.

After hospital administrators met with the nurses for the second time Thursday, tensions appeared to ease among some personnel. But not all were appeased.

“They told us we need to understand that if we lose this lawsuit, then we’ll all be out of a job,” said one nurse. “But they don’t understand that if I can’t make my mortgage payment I don’t give a damn if the hospital folds or not.”

The private, nonprofit hospital has spent more than $516,000 to put a measure on the March ballot to block the county from building the new outpatient clinic. In addition, Community Memorial has spent more than $700,000 on an unsuccessful lawsuit aimed at stopping the county project. The case is now on appeal.

Community Memorial officials charge that the county is expanding its operations to compete with the private sector. And they said they believe the new outpatient clinic will be used to lure away some of its privately insured patients.

Officials with the county hospital, which has spent more than $700,000 battling Community Memorial’s legal efforts, said this is not their intent. They said the new clinic is needed to deliver care more efficiently to the poor and uninsured, as the county is mandated to do.

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Times staff writer Ken Weiss contributed to this story.