Latest News - Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital

NUHW Pharmacists Win Contract Victory at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital

2012-06-21T00:53:27Z

Workers win 4% increases, regain pension after joining union

Salinas, California — Three months after joining the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), eighteen previously non-union pharmacists at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital (SVMH) have won a contract that extends to August 2013.

The pharmacists’ contract includes no takeaways and:

4% wage increases for the term of the agreement - the first raises pharmacists have received in four years
the reinstatement of their defined benefit pension plan, which management took away prior to their joining NUHW
reduced healthcare costs
stronger scheduling language

“Thanks to the hard work of our union, NUHW, we were able to finalize a contract that protects our jobs, benefits and retirement,” said Joe Zakar, a Pharmacist for six years at SVMH.

NUHW members’ victories at SVMH stand in stark contrast to major concessions agreed to by SEIU-UHW at the nearby Daughters of Charity Health System-owned St. Louise Hospital in Gilroy, where workers have seen their defined benefit pension eliminated, two-tier retirement benefits erected, and deep cuts to their health benefits and on-call pay. SEIU-UHW has also agreed to takeaways impacting tens of thousands of workers at Kaiser Permanente and Dignity Health.

SVMH pharmacists joined NUHW after 700 of their co-workers engaged in a year-long struggle to win a fair contract at the hospital, including waging a massive strike, fighting back threatened layoffs and bringing national attention and a state audit to excessive executive compensation practices approved by the hospital’s Board of Directors. Those workers, also members of NUHW, won a contract with raises and no concessions after leaving SEIU.

On Thursday the 28th, the SVMH Board of Directors will vote to approve the tentative agreement. NUHW members will vote to ratify it the following Monday.

KION: SVMH, Union at odds over salary range controversy

2012-05-25T20:22:00Z

Updated: May 29, 2012 6:11 PM PDT

By Jacqueline Tualla

NUHW members support bill holding hospital executives accountable

2012-05-03T22:36:36Z

George Ross, LVN, SVMH 25 yearsNUHW is taking action in support of a bill in the California Legislature sponsored by Assemblymember Luis Alejo of Salinas that would limit hospitals’ ability to violate the public trust with excessive pay packages for executives. Assemblymember Alejo drafted the bill after NUHW members exposed gross financial mismanagement and exorbitant executive pay at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital.

NUHW member George Ross, a 25-year LVN at SVMH, spoke out at a legislative hearing. “This proposal is common sense. It reflects our experience at our hospital. One of our executives received millions of dollars in severance payments in addition to a large pension. That’s shameful and unaccountable.”

You can read more in the Bay Citizen.

NUHW’s fight to hold healthcare executives accountable contrasts with SEIU-UHW, which recently dropped two state-wide ballot initiatives it had spent millions in dues dollars on, ostensibly on behalf of poor Californians, in exchange for a backroom deal with the California Hospital Association. (LA Times)

18 Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital Pharmacists join NUHW

2012-03-15T23:38:17Z

Joseph Zakar and Cara Pirozzoli, the newest members of NUHW

Yesterday, eighteen pharmacists at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital became the newest members of NUHW.

The formerly non-union caregivers have received no pay increase in three years and lost thousands of dollars each when senior administrators changed their pension plan. With the hospital’s future uncertain, the pharmacists, whose department has already experienced instability when its supervisors were subcontracted out, want to make sure that they have a voice in patient care decisions whoever the new owner of the hospital turns out to be.

NUHW is proud to welcome SVMH pharmacists to our union!

Congratulations to NUHW's new Executive Board

2012-03-12T19:08:33Z

NUHW Executive Board joined by Gary Allen, General Vice President, IAMNUHW Board Members

Sal Rosselli, President
John Borsos, Secretary-Treasurer

Vice Presidents

LaNeta Fitzhugh, Kaiser LAMC
Michael Beshears, Kaiser LAMC
Danilo Mendoza, Kaiser LAMC
Eloise Reese-Burns, Cottonwood
Helen York-Jones, Sutter CPMC
Porfirio Quintano, Sutter CPMC
Rodney Dyson, Doctors Medical Center San Pablo
Turusew Gedebu-Wilson, Kaiser HCP
Maria Padilla-Castro, Kaiser IBHS
Clem Papazian, Kaiser IBHS
Spencer Gross, Kaiser IBHS
James Clifford, Kaiser KPC
Elizabeth White, Kaiser KPC
David Mallon, Kaiser KPC
Otto Pimentel, Kaiser Optical
Ernesto Gonzales, Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital
Angelic Valladares, Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital

Links to coverage of Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital Audit

2012-03-11T23:41:30Z

Here are links to more press coverage of the State of California Audit of Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital:

Los Angeles Times
KSBW
Monterey Herald
Montery County Weekly
GoErie.com

LA Times: Audit, Hospital district leaders had financial ties to contractors

2012-03-11T02:56:37Z

Los Angeles Times, March 8, 2012 | 6:21pm

A Monterey County public hospital district paid $21 million over the last five years to firms in which its chief executive and board members held financial interests, according to a state audit released Thursday.

The audit was launched in response to a series of articles in The Times last year that highlighted the huge supplemental pension and severance received by hospital’s former chief executive, which totaled nearly $5 million.

The audit found that the Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System regularly did business with firms that the board and top officials had financial stakes in — in some cases in apparent violation of state conflict-of-interest laws.

The report stated that Salinas Valley lacks sufficient safeguards against making decisions that violate conflict-of-interest laws, and that the district therefore can’t guarantee “that its board members and executives do not experience personal financial gain from its transactions with businesses.”

The audit found 11 instances between 2006 and 2010 in which board members had reported economic ties — including stocks, salaries and other types of payments — to vendors in which the district did business.

Not all the cases represented violations of conflict-of-interest rules, state auditors said, but in two cases they found officials may have broken the law.

One case involved former CEO Samuel Downing, who had $50,000 in investments with 1st Capital Bank, an institution Salinas Valley and the executive agreed to deposit $1 million into.

In another case, the hospital made $5.6 million in disbursements to financial services provider Rabobank, where a board member, Harry Wardwell, serves as a regional president and receives a salary of more than $100,000, according to his most recent statement of economic interest.

State auditors referred both cases to the Monterey County district attorney’s office for further investigation.

Officials also recommended that Salinas Valley have an independent investigator review the hospital’s business relationships with companies with economic ties to board members and executives.

“This sheds light on some of the most egregious fiscal practices I’ve ever seen, and which were certainly the norm at the hospital for many years,” said Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville), who called for the audit.

Wardwell also has served as executive director of the California International Airshow, to which the hospital has given more than $100,000 in recent years.

Hospital officials said they would implement recommendations made by the state auditors.

The hospital already has discontinued the controversial, supplemental retirement plan, according to spokeswoman Adrienne Laurent.

And, in their response to the auditor’s report, board members said they would take steps to update policies on executive compensation, contracting decisions and community grants.

But the hospital strongly defended specific contracting decisions that the auditors called into question.

“The audit report irresponsibly alleges serious violations of conflict-of-interest rules without conducting a thorough consideration of the laws and how they might apply,” the board members wrote in a response to the state’s findings.

In the case of the board member who worked at Rabobank, the hospital insisted he had “at most….a remote” interest in the deal, making him exempt from conflict-of-interest laws.

And when Downing signed off on the 2008 agreement with a bank he held stock in, the district said he was simply carrying out “ministerial duties delegated to him.”

The hospital district also criticized auditors listing for nine other cases in which it paid money to entities with which its board or executives had a financial interest, saying there was no evidence of impropriety in those instances.

John Borsos, a vice president for the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which represents many of the hospital’s employees, called the audit “just a scathing report” and a validation of concerns going back the better part of two years.

We kept our pension at Salinas, now hospital directors may face criminal charges

2012-03-10T00:24:40Z

In January, my co-workers and I at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital won a contract with raises and no concessions.

Today, after a California state auditor’s report exposed possible “criminal acts” by SVMH’s directors, we’re putting healthcare executives everywhere on notice that they won’t get away with treating our hospitals like their personal cash cows.

Former Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital CEO Sam Downing collected eight separate pension plans including $4.9 million in “retirement and severance benefits,” yet he proposed to eliminate Salinas workers’ only pension plan.

We stopped management from making any changes to our pension plan. And today, Downing and a top hospital official who approved excessive payouts to executives now face possible criminal charges for conflict-of-interest violations, and may face fines, imprisonment, and permanent disqualification from holding any office in the state.

That’s what we can achieve by belonging to a union that’s willing to fight.

We’re not the only hospital with greedy executives. Workers at Kaiser Permanente have learned that Kaiser’s CEO George Halvorson and COO Bernard Tyson both collect eight pension plans apiece. In fact, George Halvorson makes $9 million per year even though he leads a “not for profit” healthcare corporation.

That’s obscene.

What’s worse is that George Halvorson is proposing to eliminate Kaiser workers’ defined-benefit pension, the exact same thing they tried to do to us at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital.

SEIU and the Coalition of Kaiser Unions are preparing to roll over for Kaiser management in contract bargaining. We saw the same attitude from SEIU here in Salinas two years ago. After we voted to join NUHW, we kept our jobs and our benefits and held our bosses accountable for their criminal misconduct.

We fought back and we won in Salinas. It’s time for Kaiser and SEIU to understand that healthcare workers won’t roll over for management.

We’re NUHW, and we’re fighting back

Sincerely,

Esther Fierro-Nuñez, Cashier, Elected Rep Chair
Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital
National Union of Healthcare Workers

KION Central Coast News: NUHW Calls for SVMH Board Members to Resign, In Light of Audit

2012-03-08T23:45:33Z

By Tom Jones, KION

SALINAS, Calif. — The National Union of Healthcare Workers is calling for two Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital (SVMH) Board Members to step down, in light of the California State Auditor’s report released Thursday.

The audit report claimed that SVMH has a lack of transparency and numerous instances of conflcts of interest regarding the hospital’s Board of Directors.

NUHW agrees with the auditor’s conclusion that, “the board may have violated conflict-of-interest laws” in the case of Wardwell’s financial relationship with the bank, and that “the board itself may have violated Section 1090 because one of its members arguably is financially interested in the contract, in that he receives a salary from the bank, and because the bank likely received a financial benefit as a result of its contract with the Health Care System.”

Union VP blasts SVMH pensions as 'outrageous'

2012-01-31T22:15:00Z

Andy Stiny, Salinas Californian
Jan 31, 2012

The vice-president of the union representing about 750 Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital workers is blasting the hospital administration after the release of information showing two hospital executives received one-time supplemental pension payouts of over $1 million and three others received lesser amounts.

“It’s the same concerns we raised around Sam Downing’s (retired hospital CEO) pension,” said John Borsos, vice-president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers.

Downing retired from the hospital in April with almost $4 million in supplemental retirement benefits and a regular pension of $150,000 a year. That pension scheme was stopped by the hospital board in December.