In 1997, a group of nurse’s aides, housekeepers, secretaries and other service workers at Yale-New Haven Hospital, Yale University’s teaching hospital, asked 1199 New England to help them form a union.  After 10 years of fighting a virulent anti-union campaign orchestrated by the hospital and its team of union-busting consultants, the workers still don’t have a union.  But each of them will have about $1,200 extra bucks in their pockets, hopefully in time for Christmas, thanks to an arbitrator who just ordered the hospital to cough up $4.5 million in damages to the workers and the union. 

In an order handed down on October 22, Margaret Kern, an independent arbitrator jointly selected by the hospital and the union to oversee an “election principles agreement” brokered last year by New Haven Mayor John Stefano, lambasted the hospital in a 47-page expose that paints an ugly portrait of what workers in our country face when they try to join unions and lift up their families.  You can read the entire report at www.ynhhunion.org. I confess, the union is a client of mine, so I’ll let the newspapers report the story. 

Newsday: In her decision Tuesday, independent arbitrator Margaret Kern says the hospital ruined any chance for a fair election by intimidating union supporters and spreading misinformation. She ordered the hospital to pay the union $2.3 million to cover organizing expenses and $2.2 million to the 1,700 hospital employees who were eligible to vote. http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/connecticut/ny-bc-ct–yalehospital-unio1023oct23,0,350792.story 

Hartford Courant:  The second figure is the amount Yale-New Haven paid to IRI Consultants to Management Inc., the company it hired to coordinate its campaign against the union.”Employees were deprived of the right to truthful information, the right to do their job uninterrupted by solicitation, and the right not to participate in captive audience meetings,” wrote Kern. http://www.courant.com/services/newspaper/printedition/wednesday/hc-ctyale1024.artoct24,0,5907492.story 

Yale Daily News: A secret ballot election was fast approaching last December when the union filed complaints that the hospital had violated a number of commitments enumerated in a March 2006 Election Principles Agreement, which set forth the provisions of a fair election. As a result, the National Labor Relations Board postponed the elections — and, after another back-and-forth last spring, ordered the hospital to display apologetic posters for 60 days. Throughout, the hospital apologized for the mistakes of middle-level employees. But in her report, Kern blamed top executives. Vice President Richard D’Aquila and Senior Vice President of Human Resources Edward Dowling, among others, are described in the report as having either directly or indirectly furthered an anti-union campaign. The endeavor, Kern noted, was executed by an outside consulting firm, IRI Consultants to Management, Inc., which she found the hospital was not supposed to hire according to the terms of the fair election agreement. http://yaledailynews.com/articles/view/22000 

Wall Street Journal: The arbitrator found the hospital violated workers’ rights to organize. Unions rarely collect significant damages following labor violations by an employer during an organizing campaign, but the Yale-New Haven campaign involved a unique labor-peace agreement in which the hospital and the union, which had been battling each other for nine years, agreed to abide by the rulings of an independent arbitrator. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119319460090869517.html 

New Haven Register:  Under the pact both sides promised not to disparage each other and to conduct a factual campaign. The hospital also committed to not initiate one-on-one conversations with workers; not conduct mandatory meetings; not use consultants to abrogate the agreement, while also promising to abide by the arbitrator’s rulings. Kern found Y-NH violated all these points, conducting 98 mandatory meetings where workers were forced to listen to managers’ “feelings and fears” about the union and misrepresentations about the hot button issue of union dues. She said there was strong evidence that the consultants were keeping a running count of the workers’ leanings and that the violations were not the work of a “few rogue managers.” “The employer’s conduct here was a methodical dismantling of the terms and commitments of the election principles agreement,” Kern said.  Kern and the NLRB also found that Y-NH threatened workers with a loss of wages, scheduling flexibility, wage differentials, onerous working conditions and even a loss of employment if they unionized. http://www.nhregister.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18949252&BRD=1281&PAG=461&dept_id=590581&rfi=6 

New Haven Independent: To the union’s disappointment and hospital’s glee, Kern declined to approve the union’s request for a bargaining order that would have ordered the hospital to recognize the union based on a card count. Kern agreed that a majority of the 1,736 eligible members had signed union authorization cards, but she said she did not have the authority to issue a bargaining order. http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2007/10/arbitrator_orde.php 

The solution to disgusting situations like this?  In a full page newspaper ad running tomorrow in the New Haven Register (written by me, I confess again) the union organizing committee says: What we and millions of other workers who want to join unions need is the protection of the Employee Free Choice Act, which was recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and then by the Senate, but not by enough votes to stop a filibuster or overcome a threatened presidential veto.  The Employee Free Choice Act will strengthen penalties for employers that violate workers’ rights.  It will provide mediation and arbitration in first contract disputes.  Most important, it will allow workers like us to form unions simply by signing cards authorizing union representation. 

What should 1199 New England and its parent union SEIU Healthcare do at this point?  Should they pull up stakes and live to fight another day?  Should they launch a campaign to dump this sorry spectacle in the lap of Yale University President Richard Levin, who sits on the Board of Trustees of the hospital?  Or should they focus on passing the Employee Free Choice Act and electing a president who will sign it?  Click on Comment below and tell me what you think.