Church Looks for Right Path in Hospital’s Labor Dispute

A deepening labor conflict at the financially troubled Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Los Angeles has leaders of the affiliated Episcopal Church struggling to balance their religious ideals of social justice with bottom-line business principles.

The conflict will come to a head this week when a candlelight vigil to support workers tonight is followed by a hotly contested election Tuesday and Wednesday to decertify the California Nurses Assn. from representing the hospital’s 500-plus nurses.

Nurses have been working without a contract since they voted for the union in December 1998. Protracted negotiations since then have prompted both sides in the dispute to accuse each other of harassment, deception and unfair labor practices. The confrontational climate has tested and divided Episcopal clergy and lay leaders in their quest to encourage a settlement.

“I’m frustrated,” said Bishop Frederick H. Borsch of the six-county Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. “I desperately want this hospital to move forward, but the biggest issue is one of trust between both sides. We have to recognize that the hospital is operating under financial constraints, and at the same time we can’t save the hospital by being unfair to workers.”

Borsch’s measured response underscores the highly complex issues involved in the Good Samaritan conflict. The independent, nonprofit hospital--renowned for its open-heart surgeries, orthopedic services and other costly specialties--has been whipsawed by major financial pressures in recent years, including rising health care costs and federal cutbacks.

Andrew Leeka, hospital president and chief executive officer, has made significant progress in stemming the red ink, reducing the $170-million operating budget’s shortfall from $30 million in the 1998-99 fiscal year to a projected $18 million this year. But the cutbacks have set off alarm among some workers.

Earlier this year, the hospital subcontracted some housekeeping and food services and cut hourly wages. It has also asked nurses to embrace a less-costly system of paid time off that other hospital employees have accepted and give up bonuses for working weekends. The proposed cutbacks would amount to a 3% reduction in the nurses’ income, according to CNA organizer David Monkawa.

On a recent night, several nurses raised fears that the financial cutbacks would compromise patient care. They spoke of being overwhelmed and apprehensive of rising workloads, an influx of temporary nurses unfamiliar with hospital procedures, and problems with equipment and supplies.

“Nurses are caught between a rock and a hard place: If we refuse to treat a patient, we can be fired, and if we accept a patient we can’t guarantee their care,” said Maria Bianchi, a staff nurse in the intensive care unit. “It’s so unsafe now for patients and nurses.”

Leeka, however, said that patient care had not declined and that the hospital remained top-rated, receiving a 97% score from the nation’s most respected hospital credentialing service. The proposed trims in pay and benefits, he said, were preferable to laying off people--and that the hospital’s financial problems required sacrifices from everyone.

“We’re literally down to the bone,” Leeka said.

In the Episcopal diocese, the complex situation has provoked deeply divided responses. Although the church, which founded the hospital in 1885, yielded control to nonsectarian management decades ago, emotional bonds and an array of institutional ties remain: Borsch is the board’s ex officio chairman, the diocese elects one board representative annually and the hospital chaplain is Episcopalian.

For clergy such as the Rev. Richard W. Gillett, the diocesan minister for social justice, the Good Samaritan conflict presents an appalling case of an Episcopal-affiliated institution engaged in what appears to be anti-union activities. In particular, clergy take umbrage that management has hired as consultants the controversial Burke Group, which they view as union-busters.

Leeka, however, said the hospital needed to hire experts to counteract the union’s organizers and to educate him about labor law.

Not all Episcopalians agree with the tactics of Gillett and other activists. Hospital chaplain David Charles Walker, for instance, said the workers were probably justified in seeking collective bargaining. But he also faulted his colleagues of the cloth for accepting the union position “hook, line and sinker,” including some inaccurate information, without checking the facts.

Mimi Grant, a diocesan lay leader, wrote a letter to Borsch last week urging the church to remain neutral in the labor conflict. She said the church should support the hospital mainly through prayer, and drew a distinction between the church’s well-publicized support of the most vulnerable workers--janitors and other low-wage workers--and nurses. Nurses earn an average $55,000 annually at Good Samaritan, according to Leeka, and are in huge demand during a national nursing shortage.

Amid the standoff, church members are searching for ideas on how to encourage both an immediate settlement and long-term solutions. The Rev. Joe Frazier of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Torrance said he and other clergy would work to “renew and revitalize” church support of the hospital through more financial help and other measures.

Borsch said more individual Episcopalian donors might be tapped, and in a recent statement, urged the community to increase contributions and pressed elected officials to increase health-care budgets.

Richard Reznichek, a medical professional and diocesan board representative, urged more open dialogue between the community and the hospital’s key decision makers, Board Chairman Charles C. Munger and the 11-member executive committee. “The unique problem of Good Samaritan is that it is a stand-alone, nonprofit hospital trying to survive in a changing world,” Reznichek said. “The Episcopal Church is willing to help it do that, but give us a chance.”