Hospital Workers on the Critical List
French, Kimberly
Labor's UphilL Struggle BY KIMBERLY FRENCH Hospital Workers on the Critical List Hopes were running high after the meeting in a Boston church. More than 100 workers from Massachusetts General...
...Many Caribbean immigrants fill hospital service jobs...
...Elizabeth's Hospital in the late 1970s...
...Very few know any blacks culturally or socially...
...Even pro-union workers doubted the appropriateness of the UAW...
...Very few of them are working class," says John Clifford of District 1199...
...There was a real arrogance Kimberly French is associate editor of The Whole Life Times, a national health magazine based in Boston...
...A visitor to area hospitals immediately sees the rigid segregation: Black and white people work apart from one another, and any existing animosity between the races is exploited by management...
...Clifford of District 1199, however, criticizes the white leftists for making too much of the racism issue...
...Shrewdly, Buchanan had hit a raw nerve...
...Many of these organizers have since given up, in some cases heading for law or medical school...
...More than 100 workers from Massachusetts General Hospital had voted to bring in United Auto Workers (UAW) District 65 to kick off a union drive...
...But incorporating these and other outspoken black workers into union drives is an important strategy many in-house organizers have shunned...
...At times, they have competed against each other, vying to organize the same hospital at the same time...
...Harvard labor economist William La-zonick perceives a difference between the middle-class organizers of the past decade and those engaged in the work today...
...It has no experience organizing hospitals...
...When they should have been putting the best foot of unionism forward, they were at each other's throats...
...In Boston, the major division is racism, and hospitals are one place where black and white people work together...
...According to UAW official Bob Monahan, the union could not justify continuing the drive when only 5 per cent of the 8,000 employees had signed union cards...
...And among these immigrants are many women who are single heads of households...
...When white workers in skilled jobs raise complaints, supervisors tell them that many black kitchen or service employees would love to take their jobs...
...These relative newcomers to the labor movement are not always greeted with enthusiasm by the unions or the workers...
...If we'd gotten money from the international, we could have waged a general campaign in the city...
...Besides the UAW, two other unions— SEIU and District 1199, the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees—have tried to organize Boston-area hospitals...
...The experience at Massachusetts General was only the most recent of many failed attempts at organizing Boston's hospital workers—attempts that have foundered on account of management hostility, union ineptitude, and racism within the work force...
...Middle managers could perhaps be brought into the campaign, even though "some people think that's heresy," says Bob Restuccia, now with the House Officers Association, a union for interns and residents at Boston City Hospital...
...I interpreted that as meaning people were not ready to commit to action, that they were afraid," Johnson says...
...Early in 1982, the union opened an office near the hospital and began regularly issuing 6,000 to 7,000 copies of its newsletter...
...Management was able to argue, 'They don't really care about you...
...Naturally, there's a whole cross-section of racism that goes on normally in a hospital setting," says Doris White, a black nurse who began working for the UAW in its organizing drive at Massachusetts General...
...Johnson relates one incident in which a co-worker suffered a fatal heart attack caused, many workers believed, by his increased work load...
...Management has "instilled psychological terror, and it takes a while for that to die down and the effects to wear off," says Nancy Mills, who led two unsuccessful organizing campaigns for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) at St...
...People lost faith it would ever happen...
...Nurses, too, need to be more successfully drawn into the union drives...
...And some "sectarian groups [were] not interested in organizing per se, but in getting across a line...
...Management also plays on workers' distrust of unions...
...The whole thing that made it collapse was the organizer, who was very, very lousy," says another worker...
...They argue so much among themselves about the right way to do things, they're busting themselves," Clifford says...
...She didn't get input from other people in the hospital...
...At Massachusetts General, for example, Director Robert Buchanan sent a memo to all employees accusing the UAW of trying to "dip into your pockets for dues and fees to counter the disastrous losses in the [union's] traditional areas of representation...
...Some of the white, middle-class organizers concede their own racism has hurt their attempts at unionizing...
...The UAW is a progressive, good union with lots of resources...
...The NLRB forced the hospital to rehire union supporters with back pay and to offer another election...
...they just want members.'" In the 1970s, dozens of white, middle-class, Ivy League leftists took positions in Boston's hospitals with an eye toward organizing the work force...
...Johnson called a meeting, but some of the black workers wanted to involve more people before signing a petition or confronting management...
...But not all union officials and labor specialists agree with Clifford...
...The unions have made a real mistake by not sinking the necessary leadership into the drive," one white hospital secretary says...
...Minorities and women account for the bulk of the hospital work force but are relegated to the lowest paying and least prestigious jobs...
...In dietary, there's a minor slave mentality, with the dietitians as the Miss Anns and the blacks as the slaves...
...They tend to be popular and militant...
...A union has to be in there for the long haul," he adds, "at least five to six years through two to three elections...
...So why don't workers join unions...
...But "the damage was already done," says Mills...
...The workers tend to blame the UAW for the defeat...
...This racial disparity has widened over the past seven years, organizers say...
...Racism is a fact of life in Boston, and it plays a part in dividing the work force...
...Still, she discounts racism's effect on the union drive: "I never saw the conflicts within the organizing drive as a black-white issue...
...on the part of the union," says one secretary...
...Some twenty major hospitals operate in the Boston area, employing 390,000 people within the city limits...
...Their median wage of $4.65 an hour is hardly enough to make ends meet...
...hospital managements fail to provide training programs and tend to ignore seniority and affirmative action policies...
...Everyone expected me to call a follow-up meeting, but I short-circuited things...
...At first glance, hospitals seem ripe for organizing...
...I don't want people to see that what happened means we shouldn't have a union," White says...
...It was a bum deal...
...They are motivated by guilt and are "purifying themselves," he says...
...The union reps took the view that 'either people want us or they don't.' They discounted the fact that hundreds and hundreds of workers are convinced they need a union, but they're not sure the UAW would be effective...
...I still don't think the UAW was the proper union," the Jamaican worker says, expressing a commonly held sentiment...
...The union's strategy as well as its attitude has been faulted by insiders...
...Nurses were one of the biggest stumbling blocks" at Massachusetts General, says White...
...For instance, at Beth Israel Hospital in the early 1970s, both unions appeared on the same NLRB certification ballot...
...We were telling people to stay with us, but they didn't see any union...
...And their intellectual commitment to organizing may also create problems...
...SEIU and 1199 competed with each other at the expense of hospital workers," charges one kitchen worker...
...For all the defeats, however, some of the union activists remain optimistic...
...When the SEIU challenged management tactics in an appeal to the National Labor Relations Board, the union won...
...A lot of people picked hospitals because it's a major industry, and it's largely unorganized," says Jack Johnson (not his real name), a Harvard graduate now working as a janitor in one of the hospitals...
...We've sought out people who weren't going to be critical of us," says Johnson...
...You'd probably stand a better chance of fighting City Hall," he says...
...Under the same roof, young physicians take in between $32,500 and $65,000 a year...
...Registered nurses earn between $ 11,800 and $ 16,000 a year, and service workers make $7,300 to $10,200, according to a January 1981 report by the Massachusetts Division of Employment Security...
...It was never tapped...
...While 91.8 per cent of the doctors and administrators are white, 64.7 per cent of the service workers are members of minority groups, according to a 1976 Equal Employment Office study of Boston's Beth Israel hospital...
...Furthermore, they have virtually no job security or room for ad*We middle-class leftists thought some black leaders were too arrogant and impatient, strategic overview —not good union people...
...Having conscious organizers working in a systematic way can be a real asset to a drive," says SEIU's Nancy Mills...
...That is 8.4 per cent of the population, making the hospital industry the largest private employer in the city...
...It's a million times harder than I ever thought it was going to be," he says...
...The UAW organizer declined to be interviewed for this article...
...Her attitude was, 'This is the way I'm going to run things—this way or no way,'" he says...
...A white maintenance man who has been at Massachusetts General for ten years agrees...
...With almost seven years under his belt, Johnson admits occasional frustration...
...But others keep at it, forming ad hoc organizing committees and trying to gain the trust of their co-workers...
...But in January, the UAW pulled the plug on the organizing effort, an action that stunned and disheartened many of the labor activists in the hospital...
...Unions are still the best way to go...
...The drive was kept secret from them...
...We middle-class leftists thought that some of the black leaders were too arrogant and impatient, without a strategic overview—not good union people...
...It looked like our best chance to organize," recalls David Meacham, who some months after the March 1981 meeting quit his job at the hospital to join the UAW organizing team...
...It seemed like now or never...
...Some specialists, surgeons, and administrators receive six-figure salaries...
...To succeed in organizing Boston's hospital workers, unions may have to do some serious rethinking of strategy...
...It's not that there isn't pro-union sentiment in hospitals...
...All they did was put out a newspaper and [hold] a few little meetings," the secretary says...
...People were in a hurry in the '60s and '70s," he says...
...Now, however, the ones "who have stuck it out really want to see unions organized and are more savvy about what's involved and what the needs of workers are...
...Three full-time organizers, including Meacham, worked with one staff member, and they began handing out union cards last December...
...And organizers may have to broaden their appeals and seek out new constituents...
...We felt we couldn't let them take over our drive9 vancement...
...Our job became very difficult," concedes Meacham...
...The feeling was, 'We can't let them take over our drive.' " Many Caribbean workers in the hospitals have had prior organizing experience in the hotels, oil refineries, and sugar fields of their native islands...
...People are very, very scared," says a Jamaican worker...
...They can get rid of you and make it look as if they had some justification...
Vol. 47 • August 1983 • No. 8
