Union picket shows fight over working conditions at Saint Vincent Hospital isn't over

In March, eight nurses sued St. Vincent Hospital and owner Tenet Healthcare under Massachusetts’ Healthcare Whistleblower Law, alleging the hospital fired them after they filed complaints about an overwhelming workload that made it impossible to provide patients with the care they needed.

Members of United Food & Commercial Workers Local 1445, the union chapter that represents the hospital’s personal care assistants, secretaries, housekeepers, anesthesia technicians, and a host of other employees, say conditions are no better for the workers who keep the hospital running.

On May 3, a group of St. Vincent employees represented by UFCW Local 1445 gathered at the hospital’s front entrance with picket signs demanding the hospital hire enough staff to adequately care for patients.

Every day since, hospital workers and union representatives have picketed outside the hospital, sometimes coming directly from exhausting 12-hour shifts on the floor.

'Four main issues'

On the afternoon of May 16, nearly two weeks later, UFCW Local 1445 communications director Jack Fell and four others carried signs on the sidewalk where Summer Street meets the hospital driveway, with no intent of going home.

“There are four main issues we're picketing about: fair living wage to cover the cost-of-living crisis, safe staffing to cover both staff and patients because the staffing levels right now are unsafe to patients, healthcare costs, and job protection,” Fell said. “They are trying to outsource a lot of the jobs to temporary agencies and third parties, which lowers the quality of work in the hospital and the quality of care for the patients.”

A few days later, on May 20, two UFCW Local 1445 stewards who work at the hospital stood out on the corner during a break in union contract negotiations.

'We are working unsafely'

Anita Veal, a personal care assistant, said unsafe working conditions for hospital employees led to danger for patients as well.

"We are working unsafely, not just for us, but for the patients," Veal said. "We can withstand the punishment on our bodies, but the patients are the ones that suffer the most. We are trying to take care of them the best we can, to the best of our abilities, with what we have been provided."

Ruth Guisao, who represents the hospital's environmental department, said she was concerned about job security, as she had been informed the hospital planned to outsource a number of its departments to temporary worker agencies.

"The environmental department is one of the departments they're trying to outsource. We want job security and we want patients to have the necessary care that they need, because we are short staffed in all departments and they cannot get the care they deserve," Guisao said.

Worcester Magazine reached out to St. Vincent Hospital and Tenet Healthcare. In an email, spokesman Shawn Middleton said, "We are in contract negotiations with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), the labor union that represents 350 of our staff members in various departments including environmental services, transportation and our patient care associates."

Middleton said, " We have been negotiating in good faith with union representatives to reach a new contract. We are disappointed that the union is taking this approach. We have made progress towards a new contract, and will continue to negotiate in hopes of reaching a successful resolution."

As chair of the UFCW Local 1445 bargaining committee, Steve Lajoie is currently in negotiations with St. Vincent Hospital over a new contract for members of the union, and he said the union members he represents at the hospital “are, across the board, being asked to perform the work of two or three people.”

Lajoie said one 36-bed unit in the hospital is only staffed with two personal care assistants when industry standard requires four personal care assistants for that number of patients.

Sometimes, he said, one of those workers is pulled from the floor to provide one-to-one care for a particularly vulnerable patient, leaving the other worker to take vital signs, change bed linens, and address emergencies for the unit’s other 35 patients.

'A heightened fear'

According to Lajoie, the nurses’ firing and ensuing lawsuit has had a chilling effect throughout the hospital. Workers represented by UFCW Local 1445 hesitate to speak up about understaffing, low pay, and outsourcing at the hospital because they fear they will be fired as well.

“There is a heightened fear throughout the whole unit. A lot of our members are very nervous because of what's been going on with the nurses for the last couple months,” Lajoie said. “The workers inside see all this.”

One personal care assistant who did not want to use their name for fear of retaliation said because so many coworkers have left due to burnout and unsafe working conditions, they are often the only person taking vital signs and feeding patients on their unit during a given shift.

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Even after a long day’s work, however, the personal care assistant often joins the picket.

“After people get out of work on the overnights, they're picketing, or they're out there on their day off, but it's very difficult because of the situation with the hours at the hospital,” the personal care assistant said. “I can't afford not to be (at work). I have to be there for the patients.”

The personal care assistant said the hospital regularly schedules them for 12-hour shifts as the only personal care assistant on a floor of around 20 patients, alongside three or four equally overwhelmed nurses.

“They scheduled me this month with people who have been out for the last three months, who are not here. It makes the numbers look like there are two PCAs per shift when it's really just me, and it's been like this since February,” the personal care assistant said.

Both Lajoie and the personal care assistant said understaffing is dangerous for patients in a variety of ways, often drawing workers’ attention away from one emergency in progress and to another.

“Somebody can be trying to call with critical lab results or trying to call a code, and there may not be a secretary at the desk, so now a nurse or a (personal care assistant) has to be pulled off the patient to make those calls because the secretary is not there to know this is going on,” Lajoie said. “It's unsafe across the board.”

The personal care assistant recalled a recent shift where, while they changed one patient’s clothes and bedding, three other patients on the unit pressed nurse call buttons to signal they needed help.

“I thought, 'Which one do I get first?' because I was the only one on,” the personal care assistant said. “Emotionally, it drains you. You want to help, and that's what we're there for, but it gets overwhelming. You can't breathe. You're lucky if you get your vital signs and documentation in on time without the call lights and alarms going off.”