Coalition Demands Fair Elections at Community Hospital

Coalition Demands Fair Elections at Community Hospital
By Mike Rhodes

A local coalition of community, medical, elected, and religious leaders have formed the Fresno Fair Election Commission to ensure that workers at Fresno Community Medical Centers are allowed to decide whether or not to unionize in an environment free of threats and intimidation. At a press conference held today, the commission released a statement to the workers. It said “we have formed our commission because of your intention to form a union with SEIU-UHW. We would like to meet with you as soon as possible to discuss the establishment of fair and simple ground rules for an election process to determine union representation.”

A letter to the management of the hospital, requesting a meeting, was sent last week. John Donaldson, former Fresno County Supervisor and chairperson of the Fair Election Commission, said that the hospital has not set a date for a meeting, but did indicate that they will issue a statement this week.

Speaking at the press conference were several commission members. Patience Milrod, who is a local attorney and a member of the commission, speaking about the employees campaign to organize a union, said that “workers should have a fair opportunity to make that decision for themselves. The hospital needs to not spend its money or the public’s money fighting the union with the tactics we have seen other hospitals use in the past, including intimidating workers in one-on-one meetings and other kinds of disinformation campaigns.”

Roger Larson, the former Chief of Medicine at University Medical Center and a commission member, said that Community Medical Center has supplied about 30% of the physicians who are practicing in this community “so it is essential, it is critical, that this hospital can function well and it will do so best when it has employees that are treated fairly and that is our goal.”

Rev. Walt Parry of Metro Ministry said that he agreed to be on this commission for two primary reasons “one is that the focus of Community Medical Centers and all the workers needs to be to maintain and improve patient care. . . secondly, no employee at Community Medical Center should be intimidated by either the Community Medical Center administration or other employees or by the union. It is with that hope that I have agreed to be on this commission - that there can be a fair election that is totally legal and that nobody is intimidated in the process and throughout it all the primary emphasis of all of the people involved is on improving patient care.”

Donaldson introduced the commissions Free and Fair Election Agreement Principles. They are:

1. No negative campaigning that disparages the employer or the union.
2. No mandatory one-on-one or group meetings.
3. Equal access to factual information.
4. No use of outside consultants.
5. No harassment, intimidation or discrimination against employees because of their support for, or opposition to, the union.
6. Quick and effective enforcement of election conduct by a neutral third party.
7. Secret-ballot elections conducted and certified by the National Labor Relations Board.

For earlier Indymedia articles about the union organizing drive at Community Medical Centers, see: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/09/06/18446112.php and http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/08/28/18444327.php

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