BUSH NLRB MAJORITY ORDERS HEALTH CARE
WORKERS: VOLUNTEER TO WORK OVERTIME

The Bush-named majority of the National Labor Relations Board is now ordering the nation’s health care workers to volunteer to work overtime--or else risk being fired.

In a decision last month pitting California Pacific Medical Center of San Francisco against SEIU-United Health Care Workers West, an NLRB panel ruled 2-1 on a party-line vote that health care workers could not refuse to volunteer for overtime without giving a federal mediator at least 10 days notice.

The practical impact, dissenting Democrat Wilma J. Liebman added, is that unions are penalized because of members’ refusal to work overtime, and that workers who refuse to work overtime do so “only at the risk of losing their jobs.”

“SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West, its officers, agents, and representatives, shall cease and desist from engaging in any strike, picketing, or other concerted refusal to work, including a concerted refusal to volunteer for overtime work, at the premises of California Pacific Medical Center, or any other health care institution, without timely notifying, in writing, any such health care institution and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, not less than 10 days prior to such action, of that intention,” the key section of the board’s order says.

“SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West, its officers, agents, and representatives, shall cease and desist from engaging in any strike, picketing, or other concerted refusal to work, including a concerted refusal to volunteer for overtime work, at the premises of California Pacific Medical Center, or any other health care institution, without timely notifying, in writing, any such health care institution and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, not less than 10 days prior to such action, of that intention,” the key section of the board’s order says.

Liebman retorted that “employees’ refusal to volunteer for overtime did not constitute a ‘concerted refusal to work’” under labor law. “Therefore, the union did not violate that provision by failing to provide the required notices.”

Liebman said the board majority relied on a prior hospital case it decided against the nurses and the union there, for setting the wrong time--by four hours--for their required 10-day notice to strike. That ruling was wrong, too, Liebman said.

“How is a union to comply with this requirement when the refusal to work is not a strike called for a set time, but rather the refusal of individual employees to work overtime, if and when the opportunity is offered to them by the employer? The employer exercises complete control over when employees will be asked to work overtime, and the union has no way of knowing when the employer might make that request,” she protested.

“Even where the union sets a prospective date and time for employees’ concerted refusal to volunteer, as it did here, there is no guarantee the overtime will be offered precisely then,” she added.

The case started last June when California Pacific tried to contract out work in the linen department, violating its contract with SEIU-United Health Care Workers West. In response, when supervisors sought volunteers to work overtime, they found that not enough people stepped forward.

“Environmental Services (EVS) department workers at all three CMPC campuses are standing up to management’s attempt to subcontract jobs of our co-workers in the Linen room,” the union explained in a newsletter. “Last week a supermajority of SEIU-UHW members in the EVS department signed a petition demanding CMPC respect our contract and halt its plans to subcontract the Linen Room.

“In addition, the petition called for one week of no overtime, no extra shifts for UHW members in the EVS department. Starting on June 5th, the no-overtime, no-extra-shift policy has exposed the short staffing management created in the EVS department. It is now crystal clear CMPC needs to hire more EVS staff, not eliminate jobs.”

The hospital responded by saying the no-overtime no-extra-shift action broke labor law, which mandates a 10-day advance notice before a strike by health care workers. The board majority agreed, adopting the reasoning of its administrative law judge, without additional comment.