Resurrection Health Care ‘Tried to Silence Me’

by James Parks, Mar 10, 2008

For the past five years, management at the Resurrection Health Care System has conducted a vicious anti-union campaign to stop its employees from freely joining a union. That anti-union campaign has spawned 15 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) unfair labor practice complaints. 

The latest complaint, which was scheduled to be heard March 12, was settled late last week. The complaint charged Resurrection with trying to silence a union supporter at its West Suburban Medical Center. The health care chain has settled all the complaints without admitting any guilt.

For four years, some 10,000 workers at Resurrection hospitals have been fighting to win a voice at work with AFSCME Council 31 in the face of intense management opposition. Resurrection management has threatened, harassed and intimidated employees, according to Council 31.

The latest NLRB charge stemmed from an October incident when a supervisor told Terrence Shorter, a union activist, he could no longer speak to his co-workers in the food service department at West Suburban Hospital. The supervisor’s order came a week after Shorter spoke at an event outside of a Resurrection fundraiser.   

The NLRB complaint contended that West Suburban used an “overly broad rule which prohibits employees from speaking to co-workers about concerns affecting conditions of employment and which discriminatorily singles out union supporters.”   

Shorter says:  

I spoke out and Resurrection tried to silence me. This kind of intimidation can scare many employees. I’m glad the labor board is taking action and hope that something like this never happens to another Resurrection employee. 

In addition to the NLRB complaints, an Illinois administrative law judge ruled in June that the company violated wage and hour laws in refusing to pay overtime to some workers.

Just 10 days ago, hundreds of Resurrection workers and their supporters picketed the hospital chain’s annual black-tie Monarch Ball fundraiser Feb. 29.

Rather than dining inside with Chicago’s wealthy elite, nurses and workers held a vigil and informational picket outside the hotel where the dinner was held. They wanted to let the folks who were being pinched to write big checks supporting one of the largest health care systems in the Chicago area know that their money was financing a vicious anti-union campaign by Resurrection management.

Kelly Beringer, a nurse at Resurrection’s West Suburban Hospital, says workers are concerned about the long hours and working conditions nurses and other employees endure. (See video above.)

We felt the quality care that we are able to give our patients was compromised (when Resurrection took over the hospital). We felt that by forming a union we would be able to sit down and negotiate with Resurrection to make the important changes we felt were needed at the hospital.

Beringer says management daily intimidates workers in many small ways as well, what she calls “death by a thousand cuts.” But despite the intimidation, she says,

more and more workers are saying the work conditions are unacceptable and they are coming out and saying we want to know more about the union.

Henry Bayer, executive director of AFSCME Council 31, says Resurrection employees face harassment and intimidation just for exercising their freedom to join a union. 

It’s past time for this employer to respect the rights of its employees.  

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