rhode island hospital

August 28, 2015August 28, 2015

Candlelight vigil outside RI Hospital for fair labor negotiations

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Members of the United Nurses and Allied Professionals (UNAP), Local 5098, at Rhode Island Hospital, with labor and community allies, held a candlelight vigil and march Thursday evening to call attention to to unsafe staffing levels and other problems that continue to remain an issue in negotiations. UNAP members have been working without a contract since June 30th.

In a press release, UNAP said, “UNAP represents nearly 2,300 nurses, technologists, therapists and allied health professionals at Rhode Island Hospital. Members have authorized the negotiating committee to issue a 10-day strike notice, if an equitable agreement cannot be reached. On Friday, Lifespan officials acquiesced to UNAP’s request for federal mediation. A representative from the Federal Mediation and Reconciliation Service has been assigned to work with both parties in seeking resolution.”

“We are aware that this is a challenging economic time for Lifespan, that all health workers need to be part of a ‘shared sacrifice’ to aid the hospital. But that’s a tough pill for our members to swallow when Lifespan continues to pay a small handful of top executives nearly $13 million a year,” said UNAP Local 5098 President Helene Macedo, RN, “The question must be asked: Who’s really making the sacrifice?”

RI Treasurer **Seth Magaziner** attended the vigil

July 10, 2015July 13, 2015

Nurses union pickets for more staff, better benefits

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The corners of Eddy and Dudley streets were lost in a blur of purple as more than 400 nurses and other professionals working at Rhode Island Hospital picketed for higher wages, retirement benefits, and more staff.

The United Nurses and Allied Professionals (UNAP) Local 5098, shared its concerns about the unwillingness to effectively staff the hospital, while Lifespan continues to pay its executives millions of dollars a year.

“With healthcare reform going the way it is going right now, staffing has become a major issue,” said Lee Meyers, a registered nurse who has worked for the hospital for 25 years. “We work on the floors, and it’s getting to be with a skeleton crew. We need to have plenty of staff to take care of the very sick people that we are getting now, because people don’t go to the emergency room like they used to.”

“We take care of seven, eight patients that are really intensive care unit type patients,” she said. “That is causing us to burn out quicker, it’s too much handle.”

Debra Page, another registered nurse who has been working for just under four years, shared the sentiment.

“It’s on every level,” she said of the staffing problems. “Its from the minute you walk into the hospital to the minute you leave. You don’t get taken care of as soon as you walk in because we don’t have staff, you don’t get the care you deserve on the floor, I don’t have the time to hold my patient’s hand if their family’s not able to be there when they’re dying. I want to be able to be there and take care of that patient, and I don’t have the time to do that.”

Hospital staff also remarked on how much the climate has changed. Bernadette Means-Tavares is a pediatric nurse, but has also had experience on the patient end. When her daughter was an infant, she spent the first six months of her life at Hasbro, and there’s a huge difference between care now, and care back then.

“[The care she received] is being given, but it’s being given under a lot of stress and restraints. What she got, there’s no comparison to what you’re getting now, what we’re giving now,” she said.

Short staffing isn’t the only issue that UNAP is fighting against, though. In a press release sent out Tuesday, the group revealed that Lifespan not only keeps their hospitals at minimal staff, but is also attempting to cut employee compensation in the new contract that will be drawn up this year.

“Lifespan is seeking to cut its contribution to the retirement security of union employees- a move which would result in the loss of thousands of dollars to a member’s retirement,” the release said. “The hospital wants to make dramatic changes to the union’s health coverage, and is proposing a pay freeze until July 2016.”

Lifespan’s top five executives and officers were paid more than $12 million in 2012, according to the most recent available IRS 990 filings. Helene Macedo, President of UNAP Local 5098 finds these conditions to be inappropriate.

“For years, frontline caregivers have been asked to do more with less while the hospital spent lavishly on high-priced public relations campaigns; millions in salaries for top executives, and on other misplaced priorities,” she said. “It’s time for Lifespan to stop shortchanging healthcare professionals and invest in patient care again.”

Page added that Lifespan has tried to take away many of their rights as employees.

“For the hard work that we do, not only do they want to freeze our pay, not do any sort of cost of living increases, and actually take away benefits from us, including the fact that we have not had a matched 401k in quite so many years,” she said. “They want to limit our healthcare, where we get to get our healthcare, a lot of things that for one of the larger employers in the state, it doesn’t look good for them.”

The union has agreed to continue negotiations with Lifespan throughout July, but the negotiating committee has been given the authorization to deliver a ten-day strike notice if they cannot reach an agreement.

January 30, 2015

Picket at RI Hospital as contract negotiations stall

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Yesterday an “Informational Picket” was held outside Rhode Island Hospital to draw attention to the stalled contract negotiations with Lifespan. Nearly 2,500 Teamsters, represented by Local 251, have been working under a contract that expired on December 31, and was extended to yesterday. According to a statement from RI Hospital the contract has been re-extended until January 30.

Union rep Brooke Reese told me that negotiations with the hospital are “not so great.” A press release from the union says that hospital management has rejected a union proposal that states, “providing quality care to patients and their families is the top objective of the Hospital and that poor working conditions, inadequate staffing levels, inadequate supplies and improper equipment undermine patient care.”

Lifespan has also rejected the union’s proposals on “job security, fair wages and benefits,” which the union calls “a slap in the face to every Rhode Island Hospital employee and every person in the community that is concerned about good jobs and quality patient care.”

To bring attention to their cause workers borrowed a large inflatable “Fat Cat” from New York Teamsters 804. It was an attention getting prop, and it had the effect of slowing rush hour traffic around the hospital more than usual. The Fat Cat is seen wringing the neck of a UPS worker, but for the purposes of yesterday’s picket we’re being asked to picture the strangled worker wearing hospital scrubs.

Jesse Strecker, of RI Jobs With Justice, said in a statement, “Lifespan isn’t hearing workers and the community’s concerns at the negotiating table, so we are coming together to raise our voices in front of the hospital.”

During the picket Strecker led a community delegation consisting of representatives from labor unions, community organizations and student groups as well as religious leaders in an attempt to deliver an “Open Letter” to the hospital administrators, but were prevented from doing so by hospital security. After much negotiation the letter was taken, with the promise of delivery, by the head of security, but no one from the delegation was allowed inside the hospital and no one representing the hospital addressed the delegation in any meaningful way.

Beth Bailey, Senior Media Relations Officer for Rhode Island Hospital, said in a statement that the most recent proposal from the union “does not make economic sense for the hospital or its patients, as our state continues to struggle economically” and that the hospital is “offering a fair contract that continues to provide wage increases, retirement, health care and other benefits.” The statement did not address community concerns about patient care.

The union maintains that Lifespan paid its “ten highest paid executives” more than $16.6 million in its last fiscal year, an average of $1 million more in compensation “than the average earned by CEOs of nonprofit hospitals nationally.”

January 27, 2015January 28, 2015

RI Hospital employees and community allies speak out

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More than 500 people crowded into the meeting room of Our Lady of the Rosary Church on Benefit St in Providence for the Worker & Community Speakout for Good Jobs and Quality Care on January 17. At issue was the contract negotiation between Lifespan/Rhode Island Hospital and General Teamsters Local 251 representing some 2,500 hospital employees.

According to Local 251, “As a non-profit entity, Lifespan and RI Hospital are supposed to put the healthcare needs of the community first. Unfortunately, management has taken cost cutting measures, causing shortages in equipment and staff that undermine patient care.”

Literature at the Speakout quoted a nurse, Aliss Collins, saying, “When we are understaffed, I cover 56 patients in three units. It’s not right for the patients or the employees.” There was a story at the Speakout of another nurse who was forced to buy her own equipment for measuring oxygen levels, because the hospital did not provide it.

Obamacare has allowed Lifespan/RI Hospital to take in an additional $33 million in net revenue last year, because so many Rhode Islanders are now covered under Medicaid. Yet rather than invest this money in patient care, Lifespan pays its “ten highest paid executives” more than $16.6 million in its last fiscal year, an average of $1 million more in compensation “than the average earned by CEOs of nonprofit hospitals nationally,” according to the union.

At the same time, hospital employees such as single mom Nuch Keller make $12.46 an hour with no healthcare coverage. Keller’s pay does not even cover her rent. She regularly works 40 hours or more per week, yet Lifespan continues to pay her as a part-time employee. And in case you missed it, Keller works at a non-profit hospital, and receives no healthcare.

The Speakout was intended to show community support for the workers of RI Hospital, and was attended by Representatives David Cicilline and Jim Langevin, as well as General treasurer Seth Magaziner. There were also representatives from many other unions and community groups such as Jobs with Justice, Unite Here! and Fuerza Laboral. Many religious leaders, including Father Joseph Escobar and Rev Duane Clinker, were on hand to show support.

It was hard not to feel that something new was happening at the Speakout. The level of community support and solidarity made one feel as if a union resurgence were imminent, which many feel is necessary if obscene inequality is to be combated.

It was Duane Clinker who helped put the event into perspective for me. He said that unions have often limited their negotiations to wages, hours and benefits, and health-care unions have long argued staffing levels, but “when/if organized workers really make alliance with the community around access to jobs and improved patient care – if that happens in such a large union and a key employer in the state, then we enter new territory.”

This struggle continues on Thursday, January 29, from 2-6pm, with an Informational Picket at Rhode Island Hospital. “The picket line on Thursday is for informational purposes. It is is not a request that anyone cease working or refuse to make deliveries.”

Full video from the Speakout is below.

Speak-Out for Good Jobs & Quality Care at RI Hospital 002 — Mirjaam Parada

Speak-Out for Good Jobs & Quality Care at RI Hospital 033 — Duane Clinker

Speak-Out for Good Jobs & Quality Care at RI Hospital 080 — James Langevin

Speak-Out for Good Jobs & Quality Care at RI Hospital 172 — Seth Magaziner

Speak-Out for Good Jobs & Quality Care at RI Hospital 087 — Aaron Regunberg

Speak-Out for Good Jobs & Quality Care at RI Hospital 098 — Carmen Castillo

February 17, 2012February 20, 2012

Taveras to meet with hospital CEOs today

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With a deal inked with Johnson & Wales and another seemingly imminent with Brown University, Providence Mayor Angel Taveras turns his attention toward the hospitals this afternoon when he will meet with the CEO’s of the three medical institutions this afternoon.

“There’s been a lot of focus on Brown and the colleges and universities,” said Taveras’ press secretary David Ortiz, “but it’s really important that Lifespan and the two other health care institutions also contribute more for the services they receive.”

Taveras said negotiations for a new in lieu of tax payments from the local hospitals have been “not as productive as they have been with Johnson & Wales. But pending tomorrow’s conversation … that might be a very productive conversation.”

Don’t count on it.

“We have a very respectful difference of opinions,” said Mark Montella, Lifespan’s senior vice president of external affairs, when asked about the mayor’s request for more financial help from the hospitals. Lifespan runs Rhode Island Hospital, Hasbro Children’s Hospital, Butler and Miriam Hospital.

He said Lifespan already contributes to the city in terms of the many services they provide, such as the uncompensated emergency care the hospitals provide and the non-emergency medical clinics it sponsors. Of course, hospitals are required by federal law to provide emergency care to anyone who needs it, regardless of ability to pay, and the clinics are a part of the hospitals’ charitable mission that help bring in millions in donations and cement its nonprofit status.

The city is looking for $7.1 million from the property-tax exempt nonprofits in the city to fill a hole in his budget. Ortiz said Taveras has started negotiations with these nonprofits by asking for 25 percent of what they would owe in property taxes if they weren’t exempt. That number, Ortiz said, is based on a bill that was defeated in the General Assembly last year. In the case of Lifespan, that would mean a payment of approximately $8 million.

Montella said such an amount would have “a sizable economic impact on the organization.”

Probably it would. But Lifespan and the other hospitals can certainly afford to give the city something more than they are. After all, Lifespan’s CEO made $2.9 million in 2009 alone. One would think the community the hospitals exists in is at least as valuable as any one employee.