Santa Rosa Memorial, Petaluma Valley hospital workers will meet St. Joseph Health in public forum

Amid ongoing labor talks, workers at Santa Rosa Memorial and Petaluma Valley hospitals are set to air their differences with hospital operator St. Joseph Health at a public forum in Santa Rosa this weekend.

Hosted by the fair wage advocates North Bay Jobs with Justice, hospital employees represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers, or NUHW, are expected to discuss what they claim is problematic understaffing at the two hospitals, noncompetitive wages and threats to their health care and retirement benefits.

“If you don’t have the correct amount of staffing, the patients don’t get the quality of care they are supposed to,” said Susan Daly, a licensed vocational nurse at Memorial Hospital and member of NUHW’s bargaining team.

Meanwhile, hospital officials declined to discuss details about their “active bargaining sessions” with the union.

“While we respect NUHW’s right to make comments via the media and to others, we prefer to have discussions at the table, where real progress can be made,” St. Joseph spokeswoman Vanessa deGier said. “As always, we are open to discussing these and other matters with the union and look forward to receiving their proposals.”

Daly said one of the big issues is management’s failure to fulfill staffing requirements related to nursing assistants, known as care partners, even as patients are “sicker and stay in the hospital longer,” she said.

The union also said Memorial and Petaluma Valley hospitals are losing employees to other local hospitals that offer better benefits and wages.

Union officials are expected to publicly blast St. Joseph for not sharing more of its net revenues with employees. The union said both hospitals reported a combined net revenue of $59.1 million in 2014.

But deGier said the union fails to acknowledge that St. Joseph is a nonprofit health system that does not post profits nor does it reward shareholders.

“Rather, we reinvest our surplus back into the community, maintaining much-needed facilities, services and outreach, including care for our most vulnerable neighbors,” deGier said. “We use our operating margin to provide millions in care for patients who cannot afford to pay for their care, for instance, and invest in programs that support the health and well-being of all in our community.”

She said operating margins enable St. Joseph to reinvest in the hospitals by purchasing state-of-the-art equipment and financing much-needed facilities expansions, such as the recent expansion of the emergency department and level II trauma center at Memorial.

The two sides have been in negotiations since last summer.

“We hope that through good-faith bargaining efforts, we can further the progress we’ve made with the NUHW and look forward to reaching a mutually acceptable and fair contract,” deGier said.

The public forum will be held Saturday, Feb. 20, from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., at Christ Church United Methodist, 1717 Yulupa Ave., Santa Rosa.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at ?521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @renofish.