[NYTr] Ben Affleck, Boston Healthcare Workers, Bad-Faith CEOs

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Huffington Post via CubaNow - Oct 23, 2007
http://www.cubanow.net/global/loader.php?&secc=10&item=3544&c=2


Ben Affleck, Boston Workers and Bad Faith CEOs

By Jane Hamsher

Cubanow.- You gotta give it up for Ben Affleck. The guy showed up
yesterday for an event with no glitter and glam but a whole lot of
people simply trying to better their lives -- the healthcare workers at
Boston's teaching hospitals who are struggling to get the CEOs of these
institutions just to agree to let them have a fair, supervised union
election.

But the CEOs are cringing like a bunch of shrinking virgins whose date
just tried to cop a cheap feel, as if they've never heard of such an
inconceivable outrage. They have called the SEIU's list of requests for
fair elections both "undemocratic" and "unnecessary" given the fact
that the NLRB has rules regulating such things.

Dear me. Let's have a look at those outrageous demands:

Management agrees to abstain from spending any patient care resources
on efforts to dissuade employees from unionizing.

Both the union and the employer agree not to disparage each other and
to present only factual information.

Employees are allowed to exchange and discuss information about
unionization.

Management does not take a position on unionization, but allows
employees to make up their own minds.

Employees are given access to union representatives and information at
the workplace.

Management agrees to schedule an election without delays and respect
the decision employees make.

Management and the union agree to a fair, timely and binding
enforcement process for these guidelines.

"If it's already illegal, it shouldn't be so difficult to agree to it,"
said the SEIU's Dana Simon.

As we saw in the California and Nevada nurse's strikes, union busters
like Larry Arnold and Brent Yessin are regularly contracted by
hospitals to come in to harass and intimidate workers who support
unionization (in an attempt to skirt the NLRB's regulations). Moreover,
the NLRB is not immune from the politicization that has characterized
so many government agencies under the Bush administration. They
recently reached back to a case from 2000 -- the Carney Hospital and
SEIU case -- to decide that the appropriate penalty for a hospital who
illegally suspended a pro-union worker was basically to pay the
employee for the time he was suspended and promise not to do it again.

Ouch. That'll leave a mark.

Paul Levy, chief executive at Beth Israel (and also a blogger) clutches
his pearls and scolds the SEIU for having held up construction of a new
facility in New Haven. "What kind of healthcare service union would
stand in the way of a cancer center in New England? That strikes me as
the kind of union we don't want," Levy said.

He didn't address the fact that the workers who are trying to unionize
have neither the incomes nor the health insurance benefits to be
treated in the hospitals they work in.

Given that one in six jobs in Boston is in the healthcare sector, Mayor
Menino (who endorses the union's efforts) was also at the press
conference. And the Boston City Councilor will be voting today as to
whether they should recommend that hospital CEOs agree to hold fair,
supervised elections.

Said Andy Stern:

"Today is a historic day. Workers have stood up to ask for the basic
right to choose a Union without interference from their employers, for
being able to deliver quality care to all residents of Boston. We are
so appreciative that Mayor Menino and the other public leaders have
spoken out and asked the executives of the huge medical centers in
Boston to recognize that quality care can only be delivered by workers
who have been given the basic human right to vote for a union without
fear of reprisal."

Most of all, it was an inspiring day of bravery of hundreds of workers
who publicly said, we are not afraid because workers rights and
patients rights are too important to stay silent.

This is an important fight. As Paul Krugman notes in his new book The
Conscience of a Liberal, "middle-class societies don't emerge
automatically as an economy matures, they have to be created through
political action."

This is a prime example of that kind of political action.

Pretty exciting.

October 22, 2007