SEIU – Actions that Go Against Patients and Caregivers

Blocking Needed Seismic Upgrades to Hospitals

As one San Francisco newspaper editorial stated (SF Business Times, 3/30/07), the SEIU United Healthcare Workers West labor union is “calling out its demolition crew” as part of an all-out effort to prevent Sutter Health and its affiliates from making much-needed investments to improve, replace and build health care facilities in the communities they serve.”

For more than a decade, SEIU United Healthcare Workers West has been targeting Sutter Health with what is commonly referred to as a corporate campaign, described by union official as “death from a thousand cuts rather than a single blow.”

SEIU has for years used the corporate campaign as a means of pressuring Sutter Health and its affiliates for concessions it has not been able to achieve through traditional labor organizing. Through an aggressive and dishonest campaign aimed at besmirching the good works of Sutter Health and trying to obstruct its operations, SEIU hopes to gain concessions from Sutter Health that will make it easier for the union to attract more members.

Sadly, many of SEIU’s corporate campaign tactics are counter to the union’s purported role of representing caregivers at Sutter affiliates, and go against the best interest of patient care.

The union’s tactics have traditionally included dishonest “research” designed to embarrass Sutter-affiliated caregivers, efforts to disrupt philanthropic events at Sutter-affiliated hospitals and leafleting the homes, neighbors and businesses of Sutter Health community-based, volunteer board members.

California Pacific Medical Center is “not going to get a permit to paint a wall in San Francisco.”
SEIU UHW Chief Sal Rosselli

More recently, however, the union has been focused on obstructing Sutter Health’s multi-billion capital commitment to improve, expand, and make seismically safe our affiliated care centers in big cities and small towns throughout Northern California. Much of Sutter Health’s planned investment will be used to meet California’s newer, stricter seismic safety laws. Ironically, SEIU published a report in 2001called “Hospital Earthquake Safety in California: Why Patients, Hospital Workers and the Public Can’t Wait.” It criticized attempts to delay hospital construction and asserted that a safe work environment is dependent upon a sound investment in new and improved facilities by organizations like Sutter Health.

Yet, through its corporate campaign, SEIU itself is guilty of stalling and attempting to prevent the improvement and expansion of many Sutter Health affiliate hospitals and care centers where its members work.

SEIU’s well-coordinated, two-pronged strategy involves trying to cut off Sutter Health’s access to financing and mounting legal and third-party efforts to obstruct the entitlement (permitting) process. Both approaches result in delays in critical facility projects, as well as increased costs that ultimately drive up the cost of care for all consumers.

Virtually every effort by Sutter Health in recent years to access tax-exempt bond financing has been opposed by SEIU. The union’s latest opposition occurred in December 2006 when it urged the California Health Facilities Financing Authority to deny Sutter Health’s request for nearly $1 billion in tax-exempt financing to replace a seismically deficient hospital (San Mateo) and to construct facilities for acute rehabilitation patients (Roseville), critically ill newborns (Roseville), diabetes patients (Jackson, rural Amador County) and women’s health services (Jackson, rural Amador County). Sutter’s bond application was approved unanimously by CHFFA in March despite SEIU’s aggressive opposition. Yet SEIU’s tactics caused months of delays – delays that increased costs for these projects by millions dollars - costs ultimately shouldered by health care consumers.

In addition to its attempts at blocking Sutter Health’s access to capital, SEIU is working on a parallel track to obstruct the organization’s capital projects themselves by fighting the approval process at the local government level and through the courts. For example, SEIU filed a lawsuit in January 2006 to delay a substantial redevelopment project for Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento. This project was planned for many years and earned the support of nearly every major Sacramento organization, including the Sacramento City Council, regional newspapers, neighbors and the community at large.

In addition to filing multiple lawsuits, SEIU mounted an aggressive but unsuccessful effort with the Sacramento City Council to stop the project. And while a Sacramento Superior Court ruling in February 2007 paved the way for construction to proceed, the SEIU’s tactics side-tracked the project for several months allowing inflation to drive up construction costs for the project.

While SEIU took center stage in its campaign to stop Sutter Health’s capital improvements in Sacramento, the union appears to be taking a lower profile by calling the shots from behind the scenes in San Carlos where Sutter-affiliated Palo Alto Medical Foundation has plans to build a new medical campus. According to the San Mateo County Times (3/9/06), the project is facing “opposition from San Carlos Residents for a Healthy Open Debate, affiliated with Oakland Based SEIU.” The newspaper reported (5/29/06) that “The Healthy Debate group receives financial backing from the SEIU and has an organizing consultant and attorney working on their side.”

SEIU is also now working to stop Sutter-affiliated California Pacific Medical Center from building a new medical center in San Francisco, mounting its challenge before the County Board of Supervisors and other venues. SEIU United Healthcare Workers West leader Sal Rosselli told the San Francisco Business Times (3/30/07) that CPMC is “not going to get a permit to paint a wall in San Francisco.”

In an editorial in the same edition, the Business Times expressed concern about “the potential for SEIU-allied officials to introduce obstacles, instigate delays and generally cause mischief…” with the project, noting that San Francisco’s “progressive politicians tend to act as (SEIU’S) faithful and obedient lapdogs” that “can usually be counted on to roll over to SEIU demands.” The editorial concluded with the plea: “Don’t let them. After all, supervisors were elected to represent us, not the SEIU.”

In all, SEIU’s challenges to these facility improvements run counter to the interests of the caregivers the union purports to represent, and their roadblocks have served to stall vital hospital expansion and improvement plans that are needed and required in communities throughout Northern California. While Sutter Health will continue undeterred to fulfill our commitment to provide the best, safest care environment through our capital expansion plans, undoubtedly SEIU has a very different agenda and should be held accountable its destructive actions.