Workers say the numbers point to understaffing, as they often must work overtime and through breaks to care for patients and complete other essential tasks.

UCSF nurse Erin Carrera, a representative for the California Nurses Association, said that most instances of overtime occur when there are not enough staff members, nurses have not finished their patient-care work or a replacement has not arrived to relieve them.

“We’re nurses,” Carrera said. “We’re not going to walk away from our patients because we don’t have a release.”

Out of nearly 15,000 nurses employed by the UC system in 2012, nearly 13,000 earned some amount of overtime, according to a UC payroll report published July 31. The payroll report also shows that 235 of the 270 ultrasound technologists and 485 of the 547 radiology technologists employed by the system earn overtime. These ratios have remained somewhat consistent since 2010 and 2011.

UC spokesperson Dianne Klein said that overtime is a necessary part of providing adequate health care services and that staff members are well-compensated for overtime work.

Nurses working overtime are typically compensated at a rate of 1.5 times their regular salary, according to the nurses’ contract. The contract also stipulates that overtime cannot be mandatory except during university-declared emergencies.

“Effective medical care means that staff must be flexible and willing to work overtime in the event of emergencies,” Klein said in an email. “I believe you’ll find that the majority of our medical center employees – dedicated professionals – enjoy their jobs and consider UC a great place to work.”

Overtime work is voluntary for many workers, but UC San Diego MRI technologist Richard Smith said that the UC system can say it is voluntary because they know someone will do the work. Smith said that he and his co-workers each work seven to 25 hours of overtime every week in order to fulfill patient-care needs.

“Someone has to step up and say ‘I’ll do the overtime’ and take care of the patients,” Smith said.

American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, which represents more than 12,000 patient-care workers, has claimed that many UC medical centers are experiencing understaffing and has cited staffing levels as a major reason for recent strikes. The union has been in contract negotiations with the UC system since 2012.

“There is far more use of overtime,” said AFSCME spokesperson Todd Stenhouse. “UC’s policy has been to demand that health care workers do more with less.”

Tim Thrush, vice president of patient care at AFSCME and diagnostic sonographer at UCSF, said that patient-care workers have to work overtime in order to care for every patient that management books.

According to Klein, however, the number of health care staff members employed by the UC system increased from 2008 to 2013, with the number of patient-care technical workers increasing by about 13 percent and the number of health care professional staff members increasing by about 35 percent. Service staff represented by AFSCME increased by less than 1 percent.

“Our medical centers operate in a highly regulated environment and if we had unsafe staffing levels, we simply would not be allowed to operate,” Klein said in an email.

Stenhouse said the UC system should convert its per diem workers, who receive no guaranteed benefits, to its career staff. He added that there is a need for enforceable levels of safe staffing and a committee to ensure safe staffing ratios are maintained.

Contact Sohan Shah at sshah@dailycal.org.

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Kayla Shapiro/Staff

Registered nurses at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley went on their sixth strike Thursday, along with six other East Bay hospitals, in protest of contract negotiations with Sutter Health Corporation. The California Nurses Association’s strike is emblematic of its members’ ongoing discontentment with Sutter, which began contract negotiations with the group in May 2011. Talks came to an impasse in July, with nurses advocating for continuing their current contracts and Sutter contending that those contracts are no longer fiscally feasible.

Several hundred strikers — a group consisting of not only union members but also other hospital officials protesting in solidarity — picketed throughout the day, holding signs such as “RNs on Strike for Patient Care” under a banner that read “Sutter Greed Hurts Our Community.”

“Only four to five hundred people came,” said registered nurse Eric Koch, part of the negotiating team. “It was a bad turnout. We were expecting more.”

The first strikebegan in September 2011, and the most recent took place last July. At Thursday’s event, nurses took turns at the microphone, talking about issues ranging from the standstill of negotiations to the embittered advertising campaign between the two groups.

One main theme of the strike was the allegation that Sutter has been using inaccurate figures regarding nurses’ salaries and pensions in its advertisements.

Sutter cites that full-time nurses at Alta Bates earn an average of $136,000 per year with a pension of $84,000 per year. However, nurses at the strike contended that these numbers are not realistic due to the fact that they are calculated based on nurses who have worked full-time since their mid-20s.

“All of this rhetoric that has been given to the media — none of those numbers are true,” said Ellen Lyons, a registered nurse who has worked at Alta Bates Summit for 25 years.

Additionally, the strikers see Sutter as a large corporation with high salaries for its top officials and large profits.

“One has to question this corporation’s commitment to its community and to providing safe care,” said Liz Jacobs, a registered nurse and communications specialist at the National Nurses United. “It is a corporate health care model.”

However, Sutter contends that changes to the nurses’ contract, such as ending paid sick leave, health coverage cuts and reductions in pay, are necessary to achieve the goal of increasing affordability for its patients.

“Our current proposals — including an economic package made at least nine months ago — reflect the reality of economics at our hospital, in our communities and healthcare today,” said Carolyn Kemp, regional manager of communications and public relations at Alta Bates, in an email. “It also ensures that compensation for Alta Bates Summit RNs remains competitive in our market.”

Still, nurses worry that these cuts will sacrifice quality patient care, leading some to see Sutter as a corporate entity focused more on finances than on patients. Strikers said they have seen a decrease in serving the community and an increase in cutting costs since Sutter began managing Alta Bates in 1996.

As in previous strikes, Sutter brought in five-day contract replacement nurses, preventing strikers from returning to work for an additional four days.

According to Sutter, the replacement workers’ contracts request these five-day terms. This policy came under fire, however, in October 2011, when nurses filed a complaint in response to the five-day lockout during the Sept. 22 protest. The situation was exacerbated by the involvement of one of the replacement workers in the accidental death of a patient.

In late September, Sutter settled with another Bay Area hospital, Mills-Peninsula Health Services — showing that coming to an agreement between nurses and Sutter may be possible.

“We would like to see main table negotiations in Oakland with the Federal Mediator,” Koch said. “We have a basis to get back to the table and a basis for getting together.”

Contact Megan at mmesserly@dailycal.org.

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Javier Panzar/Senior Staff

Registered nurses picketed outside Alta Bates Summit Medical Center on Telegraph Avenue Tuesday morning to strike against the proposed cutbacks from Sutter Health Corporation.

The nurses gathered starting at 7 a.m. for the third one-day strike held since the conflict with the corporation began, according to Eric Cook, a nurse at the center. The nurses’ strike is one of several strikes taking place Tuesday at different  facilities owned by the corporation across the Bay Area.

The protests are also being held in connection with the International May 1 Day of Action and General Strike in which union workers and occupy protesters are participating.

The mood at the nurses’ strike was almost festive with heartfelt chants, pizza, blaring music and cheers as passing cars honked in solidarity. Yet what appeared to be a friendly gathering on the surface was underlined by a shared sense of urgency.

“I am so grateful for each and every one of you for being here and wearing red,” said  Ann Gabler, a bargaining team representative and nurse at the center. “I guarantee you that I am not going to let Sutter Health Corporation take a magic marker to our contract and line out the parts that they don’t like.”

According to the strikers, the proposed cutbacks include $18 salary cuts for new graduate nurses, cutting sick leave for nurses, forcing nurses to work in hospital areas in which they do not have expertise and health coverage cuts for nurses, among others. Nurses at the strike said these cutbacks will hurt not only nurses but patients.

“We’re fighting for the fact that our hospital has over $4 billion in profits in the past four years, yet they want to cut our wages and benefits by 30 percent,” Cook said. “They’re also cutting services to the community. No more bone marrow transplants, no more free breast screenings for people with disabilities … cutting mental health services.”

This sense of unfairness was a common theme in the rally Tuesday as nurses chanted, “WTF Sutter — Where’s the fairness?”

Many people, like California Nurses Association Director of Public Policy Michael Lighty, were angered by what they feel is the corporation’s priorities being placed on profits over patients.

“This corporation is designed for one thing and that is to make money and you nurses are the force that can change this corporation and make it serve the community and its patients,” Lighty said. “And if you don’t stand up, there’s nothing between the patients and Sutter’s business model.”

According to the nurses, while the corporation proposes cutbacks on its nurses’ salaries, there are other parts of the organization still profiting.

President and Chief Executive of Sutter Health Patrick Fry and other company executives have received salary hikes, nurses said.

The conflict with the corporation has stretched over 43 contract negotiation sessions adding up to a total of 500 hours over the last year, Gabler said. Still, the nurses at the center feel the corporation has been unresponsive to the needs and demands from the nurses.

“Alta Bates has been a powerhouse of union activity and that’s what (Sutter) wants to do here,” said nurse John Maynes. “They want to try to break the union here at one of its most powerful places.”

Jaehak Yu covers city government.

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The multiyear contracts span five unions, which represent workers across fields including the university police force, lecturers and nurses.

The university has reached contract agreements with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 — a union representing about 20,000 patient care and service workers — and the total approximately 12,600 employees represented by the UC-American Federation of Teachers, the Federated University Police Officers Association and the California Nurses Association. Most recently, the university has tentatively agreed to a contract with the Coalition of University Employees, a union of clerical workers.

The five-year contract would affect about 12,500 university employees, and will be voted on by union members between Nov. 18 and Dec. 9.

As its contract with the university expires this year, CUE has been in negotiations with the university longer than any of the other unions, according to Amatullah Alaji-Sabrie, chief negotiator for CUE Teamsters Local 2010.

The new contract will include aggregate pay increases over the term of the contract of between 20 percent and 28 percent, based on years of service. All employees will receive a 3 percent across the board pay increase every year after the first year of the contract until the fifth year, when they will receive a 2 percent increase. The wage increases are compounding.

Along with salary increases, beginning in April 2012, the minimum salary rate will be set at $13.70 per hour and will be increased to $14.22 in April 2013.

The contract will also change employee contribution to the UC Retirement Program. Upon ratification and implementation of the salary increases, employees will begin contributing a total of 3.5 percent of their salary to the program. In July 2012, the total contribution will jump to 6.5 percent, and employees hired after July 2013 will have to contribute 7 percent of their salaries to the program.

Currently, the union is organizing the ratification vote, Alaji-Sabrie said. She said if the contract is not ratified, there will be a strike vote.

“We are optimistic that our colleagues will see that this is the best agreement that we can reach with the university,” she said. “It is an opportunity to put money into the pockets of the people we represent, because we have been waiting a long time.”

Alaji-Sabrie added that the contract was the best agreement the union could reach given the current economic climate.

The other recent agreements between unions and the university reflect the CUE negotiations. According to a Nov. 8 UC Office of the President press release, the agreements will make most of UC’s union-represented employees pay the same health insurance rates and make the same pension contributions in the coming year as the general UC employee population. Additionally, the university will continue to pay about 87 percent of health costs and increase its pension contributions this year and next year.

UC Vice President of Human Resources Dwayne Duckett could not be reached for comment as of press time, but in the press release he stated that the agreements work to produce “a more stable, predictable labor relations environment.”

Damian Ortellado covers higher education.

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The tentative agreement would affect more than 12,500 clerical employees — most commonly administrative assistants, clerks and library assistants — systemwide, according to the press release.

The last negotiation with the coalition happened about five years ago, according to UC spokesperson Dianne Klein.

“We think it is a fair agreement,” Klein said.

Union members will vote on the proposal this month.

“If they decide not to ratify it, then it is back to square one,” Klein said.

Specific details are not available because of the tentative nature of the agreement, according to Klein. The union has the ability to negotiate the terms before the agreement becomes finalized.

This agreement follows several recently negotiated contracts between unions and the university.  The university has finalized agreements with the California Nurses Association, the Federated University Police Officers Association and the American Federation of Teachers in the past few months, according to the press release.

These agreements allow for most of the university’s union-represented employees to pay the same health insurance rates and make the same pension contributions as the general university employee population, according to the press release.

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In response to a one-day nurses strike Sept. 22, Sutter Health hospitals hired replacement nurses for five days, preventing nurses from returning to work until the following week — a move that National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association, a chapter of the national union, claim is unlawful.

“We want this to be found to be an illegal lockout,” said Liz Jacobs, a spokesperson for the state union. “We believe that Sutter was using this to really put pressure on the nurses not to strike and to punish them for going on strike.”

After the Sept. 22 strike, in which at most 23,000 union members walked out to address “200 sweeping demands for concessions” they said would “restrict their ability to effectively advocate for patients,” nurses could not return to work until Sept. 27.

“Because the nurses’ union called a statewide strike and pulled 23,000 nurses away from more than 100,000 patients throughout the state, securing traveling nurses was difficult,” said Stacey Wells, director of public affairs and communications at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, an affiliate of Sutter Health, in an email. “To get the number of (registered nurses) necessary to continue caring for our patients we had to sign a five-day contract with the agency that provided traveling nurses.”

Yet the union believes it gave Sutter Health fair notice of the plans to strike with a Sept. 9 release. According to the complaint, nurses were advised that they would be required to work on the day of the strike, and if they chose not to show up, they would be able to return to work only after the five-day replacement period.

The three Alta Bates Summit Medical Center campuses, two of which are in Berkeley and one in Oakland, employ 1,800 nurses, and 40 percent came to work on the day of the strike, according to Wells. Alta Bates hired 500 replacement nurses under five-day contracts to work after the strike.

“Sutter wasn’t forced by anyone to serve a long-term lockout contract — they did it voluntarily,” Jacobs said. “Sutter had the guarantee of the nurses of an unconditional return to work at the end of the one-day strike.”

In the complaint, filed with the National Labor Relations Board in San Francisco, the union is requesting that Sutter Health award back pay, lost benefits and reimbursements for all losses for those who were denied reinstatement after the strike.

During the lockout, the relationship between the union and the hospital became further strained after a patient died at the Alta Bates campus in Oakland due to a medical error made by a replacement nurse.

“The nurses are provided by the agency we contract with and come from all over, California and beyond,” Wells said. “Each is licensed to work in California and each is as qualified to work in our medical center like any regular nurses, and those with special certifications are assigned to specialty units, just like regular nurses.”

Wells said that Alta Bates Summit is not disclosing any information about the nurse involved in the incident.

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Oakland Police Department officers responded to the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center on Hawthorne Avenue at 4:05 a.m. Saturday to investigate a patient death, the Bay City News reported. A preliminary investigation showed that the patient had been given a lethal dose of non-prescribed medication.

The incident occurred after Alta Bates administrators barred their nurse employees from returning to work Friday after a strike Thursday by 23,000 nurses from the California Nurses Association at Sutter Health affiliate hospitals and Kaiser Permanente hospitals.

The name of the patient, who had been receiving treatment at the hospital since July, is currently withheld while the police department’s major crimes division and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office Coroner’s Bureau investigates further, according to the Bay City News.

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Nurses from the California Nurses Association, who walked off the job at affiliate hospitals across the state, protested “200 sweeping demands for concessions” they believe would restrict their abilities to effectively advocate for patients as well as reduce patient care, according to a media release from the union. Contract negotiations between the union and Alta Bates have been ongoing since May.

At 12 p.m. Thursday, more than 250 local nurses and supporters assembled at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center campus on Hawthorne Avenue.

“I would be happy just going back to the old contract,”  said Jacqueline Musich, who said she has been a labor and delivery nurse for the past 17 years. “This is an unprecedented number of takeaways. It feels malicious.”

The union outlined its frustrations in a National Nurses United — of which the California Nurses Association is a sector — media release, stating that Sutter Health wanted to eliminate paid sick leave, reduce retiree health coverage and hinder the ability of charge nurses to advocate for patients.

A statement from Alta Bates  said it will remain committed to providing nurses with competitive wages and benefits.

Replacement nurses are keeping the hospital staffed for the next five days.

“We’re losing pay for five days because we want to strike for one day,” said Tanja Schlosser, an Alta Bates nurse for more than 20 years. “Other hospitals don’t do this — it’s putting patients at risk.  We could be back to work tomorrow.”

Carolyn Kemp, director of public relations for Alta Bates, said it was necessary to sign a five-day agreement in order to get nurses of high caliber.

“I’ve never seen so many nurses out in the picket line so spirited and yet so angry,” said Liz Jacobs, communications specialist for the state union.

The hospital staff is scheduled to resume bargaining on Monday, according to Jacobs.

Kemp said Alta Bates hopes to reach an agreement with the union and welcome back the protesters to work Tuesday.

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Nearly 23,000 nurses from the California Nurses Association — a sector of the nation’s largest nurses’ union, National Nurses United — are planning to walk off the job at Sutter Health affiliate hospitals and Kaiser Permanente hospitals across Central and Northern California, including two Alta Bates Summit Medical Center campuses in Berkeley, according to a press release from National Nurses United.

The strike addresses what the national union calls “200 sweeping demands for concessions,” and comes in the midst of contract negotiations between union nurses and Alta Bates administrators, according to Carolyn Kemp, director of public relations at Alta Bates. In a Monday press release from the national union, the union expressed concern over proposed cuts to workers’ healthcare coverage and the elimination of paid sick leave, which it said could force sick nurses to work and put patients at risk. Contract negotiations have been ongoing since May.

“Unfortunately, in nearly five months of bargaining, CNA has not even provided a wage offer, nor have they responded to our wage proposal. We believe this strike has more to do with the union’s priorities — like collaborative efforts with other unions — than about the priorities of Alta Bates Summit registered nurses,” Kemp said in an email.

Kemp said Alta Bates registered nurses have seen a 22 percent salary increase over the past three years, and that full-time nurses at the hospitals currently earn an average yearly salary of $136,000.

Alta Bates has signed five-day contracts with replacement nurses to keep hospitals staffed. State union spokesperson Liz Jacobs said this contract could keep striking nurses from returning to work for five days after the one-day strike, but that nurses will show up to work Friday regardless of the contract.

“Not everyone is doing the (five-day) lockout, but Alta Bates says this is required by the (replacement worker) agencies,” she said. “That’s not the case, as we’ve seen with other strikes. This lockout is meant to penalize and punish the nurses, and make them think twice about striking again.”

Nurses from the Children’s Hospital and Research Center in Oakland will also strike Thursday as a result of their own failed contract negotiations.

In addition, 17,000 Kaiser Permanente nurses — also members of the union — in Central and Northern California have been called upon by the union to join with National Union of Healthcare Workers in a sympathy strike against proposed cuts to National Union of Healthcare Workers’ healthcare and retirement benefits.

“It is disappointing that CNA is asking its members to disrupt patient care and put communities at risk when they have a firm contract in place that runs through 2014,” said Gay Westfall, senior vice president of human resources for Kaiser, in a statement.

The contract between the union and Kaiser Permanente went into effect Sept. 1 and “provides nurses with a 2 percent wage increase twice a year … and no changes in benefits” for the next three years, according to Westfall.

California Nurses Association registered nurses participating in the sympathy strike are acting “on the fundamental trade union principle of union solidarity,” according to the National Union of Healthcare Workers’ website.

“(The participating nurses) recognize that the injuries Kaiser intends to inflict on NUHW workers are and will be injuries suffered by CNA-represented RNs,” according to the website.

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Anna Vignet/Senior Staff

Nurses throughout the University of California voted last Thursday to ratify a multiyear labor agreement with the university — the first in nearly a decade.

The 26-month pact is the first multiyear agreement in years with the California Nurses Association — which represents nearly 11,000 nurses systemwide, including over 30 nurses at UC Berkeley’s Tang Center — and includes pay increases that will average at least 11 percent over the next two years. Nurses and UC officials have before been at odds over salaries and retirement benefits.

“This contract maintains competitive market wages and benefits for our nurses, recognizing both the difficult financial environment we are in and the unique nursing markets in which we operate,” said Gayle Saxton, UC director of labor relations, in a statement from the university.

The contract affects the thousands of nurses represented at the university’s five medical centers — UCLA, UC San Francisco, UC San Diego, UC Irvine and UC Davis — as well as nurses at student health centers at other UC campuses, such as the Tang Center.

Previous attempts to come to an agreement have faltered and resulted in strike threats in 2005 and 2010, both of which were blocked by court injunctions. In June 2010, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Peter Busch ruled that striking at the five medical centers, as the union had planned, would have violated state labor laws because negotiations on a new contract were still underway.

Following the injunction, officials from the association said they would begin bargaining another contract with the university.

Negotiations for the approved contract began in August 2010, and the two sides reached a tentative agreement on May 18. On May 26, the CNA informed the university that union members approved the tentative agreement.

“UCLA nurses enthusiastically confirmed the multi-year contract,” Manny Punzalan, a registered nurse at UCLA, said in a statement. “That will ensure the recruitment and retention of qualified nurses to continue the critical work of bedside nursing for our high-acuity patients at UC medical centers.”

Ultimately, the agreement was reached through “a very unified and firm” stance from the association, according to CNA spokesperson Liz Jacobs.

“It’s always a question of waiting the other side out,” Jacobs said. “I think with enough of the other hospitals settling, it ends up being not worthwhile for the university to keep going through negotiations for the same thing — that’s expensive.”

The contract states that the UC will continue its salary-based approach to health insurance whereby lower-paid employees pay lower monthly premiums than other employees and define meal and rest breaks for nurses working throughout the day.

“Each unit shall have a mechanism for meal and break relief on each shift which shall be implemented consistent with professional nursing judgment and patient care needs, in order to ensure that required staffing is maintained during meal and rest periods,” the contract states.

Association officials have said staffing ratios were not enforced during break times, which caused nurses to often deny themselves meal breaks in order to care for patients because there is no one to take their place while away.

UCSF nurses “were pleased with the significant protections requiring break relief coverage maintaining safe staffing at all times for our patients … and they solidly affirmed the agreement,” said Erin Carrera, a UCSF nurse, in a statement.

According to Jacobs, provisions in the contract that define meal and rest breaks are of great importance to the association, as she said many nurses have said such breaks would improve their performance in the workplace.

“The meal and break rest issue is very a important patient safety issue,” she said. “You’ve got to be able to be on your toes. If you cant do that, if you’re working in an environment where you’re constantly running … it’s physically as well as emotionally challenging because you’re watching, keeping on top of a lot of different patients whose status is constantly changing.”

Allie Bidwell is the news editor.

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