When Austin Allison learned that a candidate opposed to gay marriage was running without any challengers for the Eureka City Council in 2016, he decided to run because “Eureka didn’t need anybody with that mindset,” he said.
Allison won and served on the council from 2016 to 2020, a period during which he also served as director of the city’s fire department and as vice president of the League of California Cities for the Empire Division.
These experiences helped him be a better union member at Providence St. Joseph Hospital Eureka, where he works as a senior surgical technologist.
“I’m able to see how the other side works,” said Allison, noting that he understands how Providence management approaches workers’ issues and contract bargaining.
It also gives him the self-assurance to fight back when he sees an injustice on the job.
Recently, he was part of an effort to restore his classification’s inclusion in the Clinical Ladder program after the hospital unilaterally removed it, claiming it wasn’t part of the contract.
Several months after the workers filed a grievance, and as it was about to go to arbitration, they reached a settlement that reinstated them in the clinical ladder program, which provides extra compensation for going above and beyond their regular duties.
“As a former city council member and director, cutting people’s pay is a terrible thing to do for morale,” Allison said. “It really hurts the business when they try to save a couple of bucks illegally at the expense of workers who provide care to the community.”
When Providence tried to eliminate the clinical ladder program for his job classification, Allison followed the advice he gives to any worker who asks him for assistance: Don’t give up if you think something is unfair. Speak up, and always seek the union’s help.
“If we didn’t have a union, I don’t think we would have been able to reclaim the wages that were owed to us,” said Allison, who has been part of NUHW since the hospital workers first organized at the facility and has seen the difference an organized workforce makes not only for the workers and the patients but also for the community at large — something he also strove for as a council member.
“Our hospital is better because we have a union,” he said. “We have better wages, better staffing, better care. This all benefits us as a community.”
