NIH Board gets an earful
The Northern Inyo Hospital (NIH) District Board met at Bishop’s Cerro Coso Community College on Wednesday evening to accommodate an anticipated large crowd. The Board was not disappointed, as the Communy Room filled quickly with nurses, friends, and supporters voicing disapproval of the Hospital’s grievance procedure and the District’s Medical Leave policies, and airing complaints against the hospital’s CEO Victoria Alexander-Lane.
The recently certified Nurses Union at NIH is represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). The Union took the opportunity to speak to the Board at the beginning of the meeting about the recent unfair practices charges that they have filed with the California Public Relations Board (PERB) against the Hospital District over what the Union feels is a lack of good faith over grievance and progressive discipline procedures.
Union members claimed that “the Union Committee made the decision to give the bargaining process a chance to work, and not come to the Board of Directors to discuss that process unless they needed to do so, seeking flexibility and fairness.”
After more than two months of bargaining, the Nurse Bargaining Committee felt it needed to express its “very deep concern over how that process is going,” accusing the Hospital administrators of not keeping the Board members “sufficiently apprised” of its legal obligations and misinforming them about the seriousness of the Union’s concerns by claiming that it is just a “small group of disgruntled employees.”
The Union said it filed the complaint because CEO Victoria Alexander-Lane refused to bargain with them over two mandatory subjects of bargaining: grievance and discipline. Union representatives added that they had advised the District in April that as of March 17, any changes after that date could not be lawfully applied to Union members unless the elected Bargaining Committee agreed to the changes in negotiations.
The Nurses Union said that they have not agreed to the Hospital District’s proposed policies because, in their words, “they lack the most essential components of any union contract: Just cause discipline, and neutral, binding arbitration,” which they claim mean an end to “at will” employment.
They further stated that “…with Ms. Victoria Alexander-Lane as your Chief Executive, Registered Nurses are unequivocally stating to you that we are not supported to perform our patient advocacy role, and that there is mounting legal evidence that our current work environment is punitive, retaliatory, and unlawful.”
After the Union statement, several nurses and concerned community members spoke out in support of the union, while other speakers said that some of the complaints at the hospital have been around for several years, pre-Alexander-Lane as CEO, and that “not all the doctors are leaving the hospital.”
The NIH Board did not respond to the Union’s statement or to any other comments made during the Public Comment period, stating that under the Brown Act it was unable to discuss or respond to anything that was not on the agenda.
