UPDATE: Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital strike again

UPDATE: 6:00 a.m. 5/18/16

Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital workers have returned to the picket line Wednesday morning after a 24 hour strike ended. KION has a reporter on scene and this story will be updated as more information becomes available.

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Hundreds of Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital workers walked off the job and onto the picket line Tuesday. Members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) wanted to send a message to SVMH, demanding better pay and benefits.

NUHW represents 700 employees at the hospital, working in environmental science, nutritional services, accounting and respiratory care. The strike was authorized earlier this month after 10 months of negotiations fell through.

Last week, the hospital’s Board of Directors imposed most of the terms of the last, best and final offer, which was rejected by the union.

“They’ve claimed they’ve treated us with fairness and respect and have put well-thought out proposals on the table, but in fact, they really haven’t,” said George Ross, an OB tech and licensed vocational nurse. “They’ve put out proposals that they knew we could not possibly accept. Huge cuts. Huge takeaways. Things we’d be foolish to even entertain.”

According to SVMH, employees were offered a newly implemented 2 percent across-the-board increase and a 1.5 percent increase each year of the contract. There was also a new incentive program that offered an additional 1.5 percent. They also say under the new terms of the health benefits both full-time and part-time employees pay no premium for employee-only coverage. Full-time employees with dependents pay anywhere between $47-$95 a month, while part-time employees with dependents would pay $95-190 a month. There are also new limits on what employees pay for deductibles and out of pocket maximums. According to a leaflet from NUHW, monthly premiums have doubled for full-time and quadrupled for part-time employees with higher co-pays.

“We understand healthcare is a changing environment,” Ross said. “So there are some areas, we’ve enjoyed a very good healthcare plan. We understand that some of that may have to change. But they want to do drastic 50-100 percent increases, in our part of it, and that’s not acceptable.”

“What our board of publicly elected directors has done is impose most of the terms of our last, best and final offer to our NUHW employees,” said Karina Rusk with SVMHS. “That means they are receiving excellent pay and benefits, on average, 19-33 percent above what other NUWH workers make in Northern California. We are also eager to get back to the table with a fact finder so we can come to terms on the other items that we are not in agreement.”

One of those disagreements include subcontracting. There are fears it could lead to job losses.

In the meantime, the hospital says the strike is costing roughly $1.6 million daily, with most of those costs going to pay for more than 200 replacement workers. SVMH would like to bring in a third party to look at the situation, but the union feels that is a lengthy and expensive process.

“Fact finding is a great way for both parties to come together,” Rusk said. “It’s a widely accepted practice which allows for a neutral, independent, third party to come in and take a look at the situation and try to help both sides reach an agreement and that’s what we’re hoping to do with NUHW.”

Despite what was happening outside of the hospital, it was business as usual inside. Replacement workers were brought in to maintain patient care during the 1 day strike. Their contract, however, has them at SVMH for three days, so picketers will have to wait until then to be reinstated.

While there are many differences to be worked out, the two groups agree on one thing — a deal has to be made.