PORT ANGELES — If Olympic Medical Center won’t reopen contract talks with Service Employees International Union Healthcare 1199NW, the union’s president said she is willing to go to binding arbitration as state Rep. Kevin Van De Wege has urged.
“The status quo is not acceptable,” said Diane Sosne, president of the union that represents more than 350 nurses and other health care workers at the Port Angeles hospital.
Van De Wege, D-Sequim, said in a Feb. 21 letter to Sosne and OMC Chief Executive Officer Eric Lewis that the two sides should allow a third party to resolve their year-and-a-half-long dispute over staffing levels and health care benefits.
Sosne replied to Van De Wege with her own letter Monday saying the union is “ready to work with you on utilizing binding arbitration as a means of resolving this long-standing dispute.”
In a follow-up interview, Sosne said binding arbitration is not the union’s first choice.
“We’d rather the parties sat down and worked it out,” Sosne said Thursday.
“We stand ready, 24/7, to do that.”
OMC considers the matter closed.
Hospital commissioners Feb. 1 unanimously approved a three-year labor contract for its SEIU employees amid protests from union members and their supporters.
Sosne said the unilateral move was akin to a child on the playground saying, “I’m taking my bat and leaving.”
“They walked away from the table,” Sosne said.
“They said: ‘This is it.’”
Complaint hearing set
Sosne said SEIU has filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the Public Employment Relations Commission.
David Gedrose, unfair labor practice manager and public records officer for the state agency, said SEIU filed a complaint against OMC last summer and amended it Feb. 22.
A hearing is set for March 22-23.
Gedrose said the location of the hearing has not been set.
Sosne said the union has more legal action “queued up” but would not go into detail.
SEIU lost some leverage in November when a Kitsap County Superior Court judge ruled that an 18-hour walkout that the union had threatened was illegal.
Sosne said the union has no plans to appeal Judge M. Karlynn Haberly’s injunction against the strike and pursue another walkout.
“Our goal was never to strike,” she added.
Lewis issued his own response to Van De Wege’s call for binding arbitration.
’Not appropriate path’
Lewis said binding arbitration is “not the appropriate path to take to resolve labor issues for a public hospital district.”
“We have significant concerns about designating a nonelected, non-Clallam County resident to the task of sorting through the considerable complexities of health care and making decisions that could literally determine the fate of OMC and health care access for the people in our hospital district,” Lewis said.
“OMC’s commissioners believe this is their role as publicly elected officials,” he added.
“The state Legislature does not utilize binding arbitration for public sector employees with the exception of uniformed and statutorily designated employees.
“OMC is following the negotiation rules in place for public hospitals, which are overseen by a neutral state agency, the Public Employment Relations Commission.”
Lewis has said the health care benefits and raises in the SEIU contracts are the same for management, including himself, and the hospital district’s 374 United Food and Commercial Workers employees.
But a vocal group of SEIU-represented nurses has repeatedly demanded guaranteed minimum staffing levels in the contract to ensure patient safety and a quality work environment.
OMC officials countered that the contracts were well within industry standards.
In her letter to Van De Wege, Sosne expressed a “need for teamwork to provide the quality care that our patients deserve.”
“Our work depends on mutual respect,” she wrote.
“Management’s unilateral implementation undermines our working together for our patients; morale among us is at an all time low,” she added.
“We are concerned that lack of resolution has implications for recruitment and retention of nurses and health care workers at our hospital.”
Van De Wege, whose 24th District covers the North Olympic Peninsula, also is a unionized firefighter and paramedic.
Lewis noted in his letter that OMC commissioners approved a financial stability plan that aims to maintain patient services, avoid layoffs or outsourcing and keep OMC locally owned and operated.
‘Tough choices’
“These goals require tough choices which should be made in public, in Clallam County, by publicly elected officials,” Lewis said.
Sosne described Lewis’ argument against binding arbitration as “Swiss cheese.”
She said binding arbitration is used by public law enforcement agencies and fire departments.
If it’s good enough for first responders, Sosne said, it ought to be good enough for OMC.
SEIU has represented nurses, nursing assistants, emergency room technicians, dietary workers, housekeeping staff and others at OMC since 1989.
In those 23 years, Sosne said, the union has settled many tough contracts with the hospital.
“We’ve never had a contract that we haven’t been involved in,” she said.
Sosne said the hospital administration deserves a failing grade in collective bargaining and problem-solving.
“I think there’s been a failure of leadership on the part of the employer to think they could just impose a contract and everybody goes, ‘Oh, OK,’” she said.
“They really should be working out a contract with us.”
________
Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
