Workers at Sacramento Behavioral Health Hospital defeated an aggressive anti-union campaign and voted 77 percent in favor of joining NUHW.
The 266 caregivers include mental health technicians, registered nurses, licensed vocational nurses, social workers, dietary workers, and housekeepers who work at the facility, which offers mental health hospitalization and treatment services.
The workers overcame a number of challenges on their way to unionization. Most of them work three days a week, so organizing and turning out coworkers for the election required significant effort. Signature Healthcare Services, which operates the facility and many others throughout the United States, brought in two union busters who implemented an aggressive anti-union campaign that included captive audience meetings, acts of intimidation and intense surveillance.
“They were criticizing the union and trying to scare everybody. They were telling people that they would have to strike, that they would lose their jobs,” said Janet Trombley-Hobson, a mental health technician who has worked at the facility for three years.
But the intimidation tactics backfired.
“It convinced people who were not sure about the union that organizing was to our advantage,” said Trombly-Hobson, who spearheaded the unionization effort after being inspired by workers at Sutter Center for Psychiatry, where she worked per diem. “It showed them that it’s important to have a union that represents you and that makes sure there is job safety.”
She said workers are eager to sit down at the negotiating table with management to deal with high turnover, shortstaffing, and floating that disrupts continuity of care and puts staff and patients at risk.
Other priorities in their contract fight include raises, improvements to health insurance, and communication, since policy changes often don’t reach all workers because many of them don’t even have access to a company e-mail address.
Most importantly, workers want to see changes in the workplace that were long promised by management but never materialized.
“People are happy to see that there are changes coming,” Trombley-Hobson said. “That they’ll listen to us. That we’ll have a voice in the future here.”
