San Pedro, CA — Healthcare workers will picket Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center San Pedro on Wednesday, Aug. 21, to protest bad faith contract bargaining by the hospital, which recently reduced its wage proposal.
The workers, who include licensed vocational nurses, respiratory therapists, housekeepers, nursing assistants, medical technicians, occupational therapists, and physical therapists, voted over the past year to join the National Union of Healthcare Workers and have been negotiating a first contract since February.
Providence San Pedro, which had been a non-union hospital, pays its healthcare workers on average 24 percent less than at unionized Providence hospitals, including Providence Cedar-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center where NUHW members recently won a contract that increased salaries by an average of 40 percent.
WHO/WHAT: A picket line of healthcare workers who will be chanting and holding signs.
WHERE/WHEN: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday, August 21 in front of Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center San Pedro, 1300 W. 7th Street in San Pedro. There will be a rally starting at 12:30 p.m.
The workers decided to picket after Providence engaged in unfair labor practices. The union filed charges against Providence with the National Labor Relations Board after the hospital engaged in regressive bargaining by reducing their initial wage proposal.
“We put our health on the line for our patients during a pandemic, but Providence still wants to pay us as little as possible,” Judith Hernandez, CNA, said. “We already have severe staffing shortages that will continue to get worse until Providence agrees to start respecting our work.”
In a recent union survey, 64 percent of respondents said that staffing is too low to provide safe and timely care to patients, and 59 percent said they have considered leaving the hospital in the past year.
“We are constantly understaffed, and patients often are waiting too long for the care they need,” said Veronica Gonzalez, a physical therapy assistant who works in the hospital’s Sub Acute Care Center. “We do not have safe staffing levels right now, and we’re not going to have them until Providence starts paying us market-level wages that we need to support our families.”
Providence is one of the nation’s largest nonprofit health systems, with 51 hospitals and more than 900 clinics, including many hospitals in Southern California. It has $8.4 billion in unrestricted cash and investments and has come under fire over the past year for aggressively trying to collect payments from patients who should have qualified for charity care.
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The National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) is a member-led movement for democracy, quality patient care, and a stronger voice in the workplace. Founded in 2009, NUHW represents 19,000 healthcare workers in California and Hawai’i.
