St. John’s Nurses Seeking to Unionize

Citing concerns about short staffing and unequal pay, nurses at Ventura County’s largest hospital announced Wednesday that they have asked a federal labor board to set an election to determine whether a professional union can represent them.

A “growing majority” of the 400 nurses at St. John’s Regional Medical Center now favors a union, representatives said at a noon news conference outside the Oxnard hospital.

“By forming a union, we can make sure employees have a voice in decisions so that we can strengthen patient care--not just the bottom line at St. John’s,” said Mary Sorensen, a registered nurse in the hospital’s radiology department.

The nurses would not say precisely how many of their colleagues have signed cards pledging to vote for a union--only that a substantial majority have. Just 30% need to sign union cards to qualify for an election. The National Labor Relations Board is expected to set a vote for early next year.

The hospital administration’s position, however, is that a union is not needed or helpful.

“The hospital respects the right of the nurses to unionize,” St. John’s administrator Charles Padilla said. “But we’d like to talk about concerns directly with our employees. We think that is the best solution to the problems that plague health care in general.”

Both hospital administrators and nurses pledged they would be respectful of the process. But relations got off to a rocky start Wednesday, when hospital officials, accompanied by a security guard, asked the nurses to move their news conference off hospital grounds.

Rita O’Connor, a St. John’s spokeswoman, told the nurses that hospital policy bans events that might “distract” from hospital operations. Many of the dozen nurses present said they were disappointed as they hurriedly moved the conference to a public sidewalk on Rose Avenue.

“The hospital should allow us to stay and give our opinion,” said Deanna Power, a registered nurse. “We’re doing this because we want things to be better. This makes the hospital look unprofessional.”

Support for a union has been growing as the hospital and its 400 nurses have clashed over pay and other issues in recent months. Facing a shortage of skilled nurses, the hospital announced a $5-an-hour increase for critical-care nurses in March. That angered nurses in other specialties.

Earlier this month, the medical center’s head of nursing resigned amid speculation that her job duties were being reassigned and that she had opposed an administration plan to cut the nursing staff. Nurses saw Vicki Lemmon’s departure as yet one more blow and stepped up talks with Local 399 of the Service Employees International Union, said Roma Brister, a critical-care nurse for 10 years.

“Too often unions are maligned,” Brister said. “In this instance, a union is necessary.”

Padilla said he has been attempting to talk to nurses to address their concerns. The hospital offered noncritical-care nurses a 2% increase over the standard $21-per-hour rate as recognition that pay parity is important, said Padilla, who was brought in by the hospital’s owner, Catholic Health Care West, in July.

“We are responding to the marketplace,” he said. “Unfortunately there is not enough money in the system to do everything you would like to do.”

Representatives of the Fair Election Oversight Commission, made up of religious and community leaders, will monitor the election to make sure the nurses are not being intimidated by management, a union official said.

Stephanie Lara-Jenkins, an emergency room nurse, said someone had removed union literature from nurses’ lockers. Hospital supervisors have also spoken of the “negative outcomes” of forming a union, Lara-Jenkins said.

Padilla said he will not stand in the nurses’ way, but has been talking about the “pros and cons” of aligning with a labor group.

“It’s human nature when there are problems to turn to someone who says, ‘Hey we can solve your problems,’ ” he said. “But people end up with differences of opinion as to the best way to solve problems.”