Quick Take
Service workers at Watsonville Community Hospital plan to demonstrate Thursday as contract talks that began in August drag on. The workers, represented by the SEIU, say their pay lags up to 30% behind neighboring facilities, while the hospital is proposing raises of between 3 and 6%, along with employee cost-sharing for health care benefits.
Watsonville Community Hospital service workers plan to picket Thursday amid contract negotiations over wages, health care costs and what they say are concerns over staffing.
The demonstration, planned by surgery, pharmacy, emergency room and environmental services staff represented by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), comes after the workers’ contract expired in August. The contract has been extended multiple times during ongoing negotiations. The union represents nearly 200 workers across two employee bargaining units at the hospital.
“We’re trying to negotiate a contract right now that’ll help provide the care that the community needs and that they deserve with the staffing able to provide that,” said Chris Gil, a surgical scrub technician at the hospital. Gil described staff as “burning our candles at both ends” trying to maintain care standards.
Compared to nearby hospitals, wages are 20 to 30% lower at the Watsonville hospital, said Leticia Ornelas, a dietician. This disparity, combined with the city’s high cost of living, has created what workers describe as a revolving door of short-term employees who leave for better-paying positions after just six months.
“I don’t blame them,” Ornelas said. “They are going to get at least $10 more an hour somewhere else.” She added that the staffing shortages threaten the hospital’s ability to provide certain services, potentially forcing patients to seek care elsewhere.
The workers are asking for higher wages that meet industry standards and also objecting to the hospital administration’s proposed changes to employee health care benefits, such as an increase in cost sharing. Ornelas said workers can’t afford the higher premiums without pay hikes.
The hospital is proposing a 5% cost share for full-time union employees making more than $60 an hour, which is the same percentage hospital nurses pay in accordance to their union contract, said Gere. For employees making less than $35 an hour, the hospital is proposing a 2.5% cost share, and for employees making $35 to less than $60, a 4% cost share.
The hospital’s goal is to get its employees the highest wages it can afford and the best possible health care plan with a relatively minimal cost share required by employees, said hospital spokesperson Nancy Gere.
The hospital is trying to get service and maintenance workers’ wages closer to market rates as much as they can, said Gere. Hospital administrators have already proposed an across-the-board 3% annual wage increase, and an additional 1 to 6% increase for employees who are the furthest away from industry-standard wages.
“We’re fully committed to the whole staff, all the different employees, and then at the same time, we have a responsibility to our community who expects us to be financially responsible so we can be here for generations to come,” Gere said.
The community hospital is owned by the Pajaro Valley Health Care District, which formed to purchase it out of bankruptcy. In March, voters in the district passed Measure N, a $116 million bond measure that hospital leaders said would go a long way toward improving the facility’s long-term financial prospects.
Last month, the district announced it had purchased the 27-acre property for $40 million from an Alabama-based real estate investment firm, which it said would allow it to redirect $3 million in annual rent payments toward hospital services
Workers hoped the contract negotiations would “go more smoothly” after the measure passed, the union said in a media release.
Hospital service staff will be doing an informational picket outside of the hospital on Thursday from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 75 Nielson St.
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