Working paper aims for just
workplace
By ARTHUR JONES
NCR Staff Washington
In a Washington conference room Aug. 26, a cautiously optimistic
working group had just released Principles and Practices for a Fair and
Just Workplace for Catholic Health Care.
On the same day, but an hour earlier, nurses at Catholic
Healthcare West-owned Bakersfield Memorial Hospital in California walked off
the job. The Bakersfield situation was a classic example of a recurrent
eruption -- unions (in this case the California Nurses Association) and
Catholic hospital managements squaring off.
The USCC Domestic Policy Committee of the U.S. Catholic Conference
had developed the working paper for just such a situation, but it
was not aimed at any ongoing dispute, said committee member Sister
of Mercy Mary Roch Rocklage.
In was Rocklages idea two years ago to have the
bishops committee develop a paper on just workplace
principles and practices that would help. As she said Aug. 26, it is vital
to create an environment in which the workers were free to choose, not
coerced by labor or management. The intention, said Rocklage, president
and CEO of the Mercy Health System, St. Louis, is for unions and hospitals to
agree on the rules of engagement.
The rules, or at least questions that could be used to determine
rules at the local level, emerged from a subcommittee created by Bishop William
Skylstad, the bishops domestic social policy chair at the time. The
subcommittee included representatives of the Catholic Health Association,
Catholic hospital management and unions, and bishops.
Assessing the result at the Washington meeting, the AFL-CIOs
Gerard Shea, one of the participants, said that while there was not agreement
on some of the more neuralgic points, Rocklage was offering a
different paradigm, a sharp contrast to adversarial labor-management
relations.
The draft states that when workers are serious about
organizing, it seems that the best approach requires a civil, focused,
businesslike dialogue between management and union on just how the
workers right to decide will be respected by both parties. The sort
of key questions that ought to be posed, the draft continues, include those
addressed to both management and labor: What initiatives and restraints
are appropriate during an organizing campaign? What tactics should you avoid?
What measures are you willing to take to ensure that any elections are truly
free and fair and take place in a reasonable period of time?
The draft suggests that management be asked why they hire
consultants, and whether managers and consultants will follow guidelines based
on Catholic social teaching. Management should be asked if it is prepared to
live with an outcome where workers decide to be represented by a
union.
The working paper suggests that unions be asked if they are
prepared to meet Catholic social teaching guidelines, accept the workers
decision if they decide against unionization, and refrain from further
organizing for a reasonable period.
The draft document follows through: If workers choose not to
organize, it asks, how will management respond to workers
rights to participate in decisions affecting their lives and livelihood?
And if workers do unionize, unions are asked to spell out how the union will
guarantee that the Catholic health care mission will remain central to the
institution and not be compromised.
Earlier this summer, Rocklage told NCR, Our stance
continues to be that the church has said that for a just workplace, the
employees should have an appropriate voice in the decisions that affect them.
And they also have the right to freely choose. It is their choice.
We fail -- the unions fail and management fails --
to create an environment that is open enough and free enough for the workers to
freely vote. Its too antagonistic, said Rocklage. It starts
out that way. What happens is that when we start blasting one another, it gets
terrible.
The creators of the working paper want to avoid that.
Meanwhile, in Bakersfield, where the negotiations have escalated
to the air waves with ads on local radio stations, Catholic Healthcare
Wests John Omel of the Central California region issued a statement
saying that negotiations failed despite several offers by the hospital to
increase base salaries, add education days and make concessions on management
rights.
The California Nurses Associations Rose Anne DeMoro, on the
other hand, told NCR that the issues were staffing levels, poor patient
coverage, a reliance on 24-hour shifts and the need for the nurses to have a
voice in developments surrounding the probable closing of one of the two
Bakersfield hospitals in the Catholic Healthcare West system.
National Catholic Reporter, September 10,
1999
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