COMPROMISE—Ownership of Los Robles Regional Medical Center came to an agreement this week with Service Employees International Union Local 121RN to avoid a strike. Acorn file photo
The union representing nurses and licensed healthcare professionals at Los Robles Regional Medical Center and two other Southern California hospitals owned by HCA Healthcare reached a contract deal Saturday, five days after the union voted to authorize a 10-day strike that would have started today, Dec. 24.
Los Robles released a statement the evening of Dec. 19 announcing the compromise, which staved off picket lines at Riverside Community Hospital, West Hills Hospital and Medical Center and Los Robles. The release also made note of the timing of the strike threat, which came “during the pandemic surge in Southern California.”
“This is a positive development for our colleagues, patients, fellow medical providers and the communities we serve,” the statement from Los Robles said. “We appreciate community leaders who put the needs of the communities first over the past week and expressed concern regarding the planned strikes.”
The sticking point for nurses in the negotiations—which were held against the backdrop of an unprecedented surge of COVID cases and dwindling ICU capacity in Ventura County—were issues of safety, staffing and workload.
The deal, which includes a commitment to hire dozens of registered nurses at each hospital to ensure staff can safely take rest and meal breaks, still needs to be ratified by union members. Terry Carter from Service Employees International Union Local 121RN, which represents 9,000 licensed healthcare professionals, told the Acorn the vote will be held online due to the pandemic, likely sometime early next week.
She said the bargaining team is recommending a yes vote.
SEIU Local 121RN said in a statement released shortly after the deal was made that after the union voted to authorize a strike, the two parties brought in a federal mediator and held a week of marathon bargaining sessions, logging 102 hours of “round-the-clock negotiations” between Dec. 11 and 19.
The deal comes after tense weeks of negotiations.
Nurses held a sidewalk protest for safer working conditions Nov. 30; SEIU’s contract extension expired Dec. 4, and after the union issued formal notice of a strike, HCA responded by issuing then immediately retracting a threat to close Los Robles’ doors to transfers and nonessential surgeries and to limit ambulance traffic to patients with symptoms of a stroke or heart attack.
A nurse on the bargaining team who spoke on condition of anonymity said the process was “hell” but resulted in a “really good deal.”
“There are things we still hate, but it’s a better deal than I’ve ever seen,” she said.
The contract includes language that guarantees the hospitals will provide all personal protective equipment as required by laws and regulations in the event of a public health emergency. It also memorializes a guarantee to discuss and bargain over the hospitals planned response within two weeks of a declared public health emergency.
The contract applies to nurses as well as 120 other licensed healthcare professionals at Los Robles, including pharmacists, clinical laboratory scientists, social workers, dietitians, and physical, speech and occupational therapists, who unionized in December 2019, according to the SEIU statement.
“We won some important guarantees in this contract,” Julia Geran, an occupational therapist at Los Robles, said in a statement. “We’ll now have better access to the proper equipment and to COVID testing and safe quarantine policies. We also now have all the other contractual guarantees that the nurses have.”
Los Robles, the Conejo Valley’s only hospital and East County’s only level II trauma center, is owned by Nashville-based HCA, which owns over 180 hospitals nationwide.
In its statement Saturday, Los Robles said its hospitals have put the health and well-being of its colleagues and patients first.
“And we will continue to do so as we collectively battle the pandemic which is bringing so much pain to our communities,” the statement said. “This agreement with the union, along with the new vaccines, provides reason for optimism among our friends, families and neighbors and helps stabilize our area’s healthcare system.”