Resurrection Health Care Workers Rally for Voice to Provide Better Care

by James Parks, Aug 10, 2006

Kelly Beringer is proud of the work she does as a labor and delivery nurse, helping to bring new life into the world. But more and more, Beringer says, she feels exhausted and demoralized at the end of her shift at Resurrection Health Care’s (RHC’s) West Suburban hospital near Chicago.

I spend the day running from one patient to another, answering phones, doing charts, consulting with docs, coordinating lab tests, starting IVs and praying—praying that all of our patients have a quick and safe delivery. But what if they don’t?

When we talk to management about improving staffing, we are always told we cannot staff for the “what ifs.” But the “what ifs” are our patients—living, breathing human beings.

Beringer is one of more than 8,000 workers at RHC facilities who are fighting to win a voice at work with AFSCME Council 31. Management has launched a vicious anti-union campaign. The workers claim during their drive to form a union, Resurrection has fired several employees for backing the union.

Resurrection is the largest Catholic health care chain in Illinois, sponsored by the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth and the Sisters of the Resurrection. But its management is ignoring centuries of Catholic teachings that support the rights of workers, including Pope John Paul II’s 1981 encyclical Laborem Exercens (On Human Work), which says:

…workers’ rights cannot be doomed to be the mere result of economic systems aimed at maximum profits. The thing that must shape the whole economy is respect for the workers’ rights within each country and all through the world’s economy.

Yesterday, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee and other members of the federation’s Executive Council meeting in Chicago, joined with 2,000 RHC workers to take the struggle for their right to form a union to Resurrection’s doorstep.

In a mass rally, the workers and union leaders demanded Resurrection switch its misguided priorities, which have led to a focus on the bottom line instead of patient care and decent treatment for its workers.

Shirley Brown, a housekeeper at RHC’s Westlake Hospital, told the rally why she wants a union:

… at Resurrection, while they spend money to put marble floors in the lobbies, they skimp on mops and gloves, on basic supplies for us to do our job as housekeepers. They keep us so short-staffed that we have to cut corners.

And while our CEO Joseph Toomey gets paid millions of dollars, housekeepers start off at $8 per hour. If we want our families covered on health insurance, we pay nearly $200 a month.

I have co-workers that have taken their children off of their insurance and put them on Medicaid because they can’t afford it. Imagine that…full-time employees of a Catholic hospital whose children don’t have health insurance.

Last month, members of the Illinois congressional delegation wrote a letter urging Toomey to:

initiate a dialogue with your employees and AFSCME Council 31 to create an environment at all Resurrection hospitals that truly respects employees’ right to organize. We firmly believe that this would be both fair and sensible, paving the way for improved communications between employees and management which in turn can bring improved patient care, a goal we all share.

The letter was signed by U.S. Sens. Barack Obama and Dick Durbin and U.S. Reps. Jan Schakowsky, Melissa Bean, Jerry Costello, Danny Davis, Rahm Emanuel, Luis Gutierrez, Jesse Jackson Jr., Daniel Lipinski and Bobby Rush, all Democrats.

All the signers are co-sponsors of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would help put an end to the powerful anti-union campaigns by many employers and strengthen workers’ freedom to join a union. The legislation, which has 259 co-sponsors in the U.S. House and Senate, would strengthen workers’ freedom to choose union representation through a majority sign-up process. It also would provide for binding arbitration of first-contract disputes and authorize stronger penalties for violations of labor law when workers seek to form a union.

In June, hospital security guards turned away a delegation of local religious leaders as they tried to deliver a letter urging the hospital to end its anti-union campaign. In May, security guards barred Schakowsky and a group of workers and their supporters who wanted to give a letter to Toomey signed by 650 nurses urging the hospital system to adopt safe nurse staffing ratios for better patient care.

Last year, an AFSCME report concluded that Resurrection places more emphasis on corporate growth and profits than quality patient care. The report, based on interviews with nurses throughout the Resurrection system and data from public records and quality-oversight agencies, detailed declining staffing levels, higher prices for services and inadequate equipment and supplies.

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