Central Mass. Hospitals: State Of The Unions | Could Boston organizing spread to Worcester?
Earlier this month, more than 800 employees at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston became members of the Service Employees International Union 1199.
The union victory will likely lead to higher wages and more control over their working conditions for the medical techs, nursing assistants, housekeepers and others who voted in the union, but it also represents a major milestone for SEIU’s multi-year campaign to organize major Boston-area hospitals. In January, St. Elizabeth’s parent company, Caritas Christi Health Care, signed an agreement with SEIU that eliminated some of the usual barriers to union organizing. The hospital group agreed not to take a position on unionization or spend money fighting the union, to let union organizers talk to employees in the hospitals and to refrain from delaying the election.
First Of Many
SEIU is still organizing other Caritas Christi hospitals under the agreement, and working to get other Boston-area hospitals to sign similar agreements. Ultimately, union spokesman Jeff Hall said, its goal is to organize more hospital workers all across the state.
So, could hospital unionizing drives be coming to Worcester any time soon? SEIU seems likely to stay focused to the east for quite a while, but there’s no reason to think Central Massachusetts hospitals couldn’t be unionized. After all, many of them already are, to one extent or another.
Generally, hospitals are much more likely to be union than most other private workplaces. According to the Massachusetts Hospital Association, RNs are union members at about 52 percent of the state’s hospitals. Licensed practical nurses are in unions at about 40 percent of them, and nurses’ aides at 27 percent.
Central Massachusetts hospitals are a similarly mixed bag. Nearly all UMass Memorial Medical Center employees are unionized, with six different unions representing various groups of workers. At Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, nurses and nursing aides are union members, but techs and many other employees are not.
At MetroWest Medical Center, which has the same parent company as Saint Vincent, nurses are unionized at the Framingham campus but not the Natick one, while SEIU represents some other workers in Framingham, but not Natick. At Heywood Hospital in Gardner, nurses and a small group of techs are union. And at Milford Regional Medical Center and Athol Memorial Hospital there are no union members at all.
That kind of variety may make union drives less fraught for workers in some ways. Employees are less likely to believe either extreme warnings or extravagant promises about unions if their colleagues in the next town over — or their coworkers with different titles are already members.
Union management, meanwhile, may be more willing to agree to the kind of deal that SEIU and Caritas Christi struck if they’re used to seeing their peers working with unions.
It doesn’t hurt, either, that hospitals and their unions work together on lobbying efforts to get funds for health care just about as much as they butt heads over initiatives they disagree on.
That doesn’t mean hospitals don’t fight against unionization. Just two years ago, an SEIU organizing drive at Saint Vincent failed after a campaign in which workers complained about intimidation by management. But the union is hoping the Saint Elizabeth victory is a sign of things to come.
“I think it’s fair to say that the leadership at Caritas is setting an example that we hope other employers will follow,” Hall said.
Got news for our Labor Pool column? Contact WBJ Staff Writer Livia Gershon at lgershon@wbjournal.com.
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