California Nurses Dig in Heels, Win Contract Battle

CNA says it garnered public support by arguing that many of Sutter’s demands, such as eliminating health insurance and other benefits for the hundreds of nurses who were likely to work fewer than 30 hours a week, would hurt patients and people in the community as well as workers and their families. According to Jung, yard signs supporting the nurses cropped up in neighborhood yards, and the nurses were joined at rallies and picket lines by local politicians, as well as representatives of local housing, health care and community coalitions. These groups had allied with the CNA during a concurrent fight to block Sutter’s plans to close two community hospitals.

Sutter is financially strong: In 2010, it paid 28 executives more than $1 million each, and its hospitals collected more patient revenue per employee than any other U.S. hospital system, according to Modern Healthcare magazine.

Nevertheless, Sutter negotiators tried to use provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in an inappropriate and inaccurate way. For example, they argued that ACA’s provision that employers did not have to provide insurance for employees working less than 30 hours a week justified their plans to set the threshold at 30 hours, not the existing 20 hours, for workers to receive health insurance. But ACA does not prohibit employers from setting a more generous standard. They also claimed that they had to impose cutbacks because, as the ACA goes into effect, the legislation will cause financial hardship to the hospital chain, even though groups like the American Hospital Association supported the act because it will provide more paying clients. Indeed, according to a CNA analysis, Sutter’s revenue will likely rise substantially under the ACA.

Workers on union negotiating teams reportedly offered alternative ways to save money, such as through more efficient organization of work, but according to Hill, Sutter Health representatives weren’t interested.

Instead, management continued to hold fast in their attempts to enforce contractual changes, such as forcing nurses to work in areas for which they had not been adequately trained or increasing nurses’ out-of-pocket healthcare costs.

​“It was a total outrage,” said Thorild Urdal, a labor and delivery nurse at the Alta Bates hospital in the East Bay for 38 years. ​“I felt there were so many take-backs. Sutter was attempting to break the union.”

The East Bay hospital workers’ refusal to accept concessions may have strengthened the hand of nurses in negotiations with other Sutter hospitals — and even CNA-member nurses at the unrelated Dignity chain (formerly Catholic Healthcare West), union officials said. According to the CNA, their fellow union members’ continuing show of resistance helped workers at Sutter hospitals in other regions negotiate largely non-concessionary contracts before union members ratified the East Bay settlements last week.

The union held together and got stronger over the two years, Urdal said, and members’ willingness to fight avoided what she regarded as the unacceptable compromises by other unions at the hospital, such as the Service Employees. (CNA spokeswoman Joanne Jung said that in many hospitals, non-nursing workers in SEIU were upset at the concessions their negotiators had accepted.) During the contract fight, CNA also continued its organizing at Sutter, adding nurses at one new hospital in Tracy to the union.

Workers at Sutter are confident that the union’s ability to win on their behalf will continue into the future.

​“I think people are feeling really good,” Urdal said. ​“We showed our strength. Next time management will know we’re up for the fight, know how to organize, and understand their proposals.”