Hospital workers plan strike
Union says five-day walkout will begin Monday because of lack of pay and staffing
Hundreds of health care workers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center plan to kick off a five-day strike Monday, claiming they’re underpaid, understaffed and struggling to provide adequate patient care.
The employees — including maintenance workers, service staff and clinical support workers — are among more than 2,000 Cedars employees represented by SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West. They have accused the Los Angeles hospital of unfair labor practices and are urging the facility to bargain in good faith.
Their previous three-year contract expired March 31.
“Management doesn’t seem to take patient or worker safety seriously,” said Luz Oglesby, a clinical partner at the hospital.
Oglesby said Cedars has rejected the union’s request to ensure workers have an adequate supply of protective equipment to guard against the spread of the coronavirus and to keep pregnant and immunocompromised workers away from COVID-19 patients.
“We’re asking for basic workplace protections and respect for the lives and health of caregivers and patients,” she said.
In a statement issued Friday, Cedars said its nurses, physicians and researchers are not part of the union and will continue to provide service during the strike.
“On the first day of bargaining, March 21, Cedars-Sinai presented a strong economic proposal that would have continued our market-leading pay by providing substantial pay increases to bargaining unit employees as early as March 27,” the hospital said. “We look forward to continuing our discussions with SEIU-UHW to reach a mutual agreement.”
Taryne Mosley, a surgical technologist at Cedars for more than seven years, said Cedars is offering a wage hike of about 5% over the next three years, which is an increase that fails to adequately account for inflation, high gas prices and Southern California’s high cost of living.
“They seem to think that’s fair and appropriate,” the 37-year-old Sherman Oaks resident said.
The current wage floor for workers at Cedars is a little more than $17 an hour. Jose Sanchez, a lead transporter and chief union steward at the hospital, said that’s not enough.
“Target and some of the fastfood places pay a lot more than that,” the 42-year-old Huntington Park resident said last month. “We believe employees should start at $25 an hour.”
Cal/OSHA violations
State health and safety regulators fined Cedars $97,700 last year for seven citations that were in violation of Cal/OSHA regulations aimed at protecting workplace safety.
Four were classified as “serious” health and safety violations related to COVID-19 prevention, including a failure to immediately report the serious illness of several workers who contracted COVID-19 and a failure to maintain an adequate exposure-control plan to protect employees who are at increased risk of contracting certain airborne infections.
Cedars employees picketed the facility last month in protest of the resulting threat to workers and patients.
Mosley said understaffing has been an ongoing issue.
“We’re expected to operate with the same volume of cases, but with less staff, less supplies and less resources,” she said. “We’re seeing more patient falls and medication errors. And when those things happen, people are being written up or fired. We’ve become the fall guy.”
The medical center was recently issued a hospital safety grade of “D” by The Leapfrog Group, an independent consumer health care watchdog organization. That’s a downgrade from Cedar’s previous safety rating of “C,” issued in the spring of 2021.