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A union steward and employee of El Camino Hospital has told a local paper that the Measure M initiative, which his union pushed to get on the ballot but later stopped promoting, was a “bargaining chip in the negotiating process.” Union officials disavowed the statement.
Kary Lynch, an SEIU-UHW member and psychiatric technician at El Camino, was quoted in the Nov. 8 edition of The Daily News saying, “Truthfully, the measure was initially proposed as a bargaining chip in the negotiating process. We picked salaries because it was something that resonated with voters.”
That measure was Measure M, which places a cap on executive salaries at the district hospital. The measure dictates that no employee at El Camino can make more than twice the governor of California’s salary.
Officials from both the SEIU-UHW and the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council emphasized that while the man who made the remark has spoken to newspapers on union issues in the past, he is not an official union spokesman.
The reason the union would could have used a bargaining chip was that the hospital board had imposed a contract upon the union, which union leaders and many in the union found unsatisfactory. One major complaint was it took away an option for a healthcare plan with no-cost premiums for employees.
“Despite a published report, Kary Lynch is not an official of SEIU-UHW,” a statement issued by the SEIU-UHW began. “He is not an elected member of the union’s executive board and does not hold any other official position. His statement does not reflect the current or past position of SEIU-UHW.”
After all was said and done, 24,650 votes (51.91 percent) had been tallied in favor of the Measure, while 22,833 (48.09 percent) had been cast in opposition.
Gov. Jerry Brown currently makes $173,987 annually. Twice his salary, $347,974, is still less than half El Camino CEO Tomi Ryba’s proposed 2013 salary of $714,460. The hospital’s chief financial officer, Michael King, and its chief medical officer, Dr. Eric Pifer, also make more than twice the governor’s salary $420,000 and $450,000 respectively.
Lynch did not respond to repeated requests to comment for this story, nor did he respond when the Voice attempted to reach him in early October to ask if the union’s decision to back away from pushing Measure M was the result of a long-disputed contract issue being settled.
That dispute began in 2010 when the hospital board imposed a contract on hospital workers. The biggest sticking point in that contract was the elimination of a free health care plan. In May of 2012 Measure M qualified to appear on the Nov. 6 ballot, thanks in large part to a push from the SEIU-UHW who sent people out into the community to gather signatures for the initiative.
In the early stages of Measure M, Lynch and others in support of the initiative said the salary cap was about creating parity between the top administrators and the most entry level workers at the hospital.
In September it was announced that the SEIU-UHW had reached an agreement with the hospital on a new contract that restored the free health care plan option.
But as the Nov. 6 election drew near, campaign reports reviewed by Voice showed that the SEIU-UHW had spent no money promoting the measure.
When asked whether the union decided to stop backing the measure after more favorable contact negotiations concluded, the union representative replied: “No. Our priorities shifted.”
Responding to the story that appeared in The Daily News, that same union representative, Carlyn Foster, gave a much longer statement:
“SEIU-UHW members placed Measure M on the ballot solely to rein in executive salaries at the El Camino Hospital District, which is partially supported by taxpayer dollars,” the statement said. “At the time SEIU-UHW members filed signatures to put Measure M on the ballot, El Camino hospital management was taking the position in contract bargaining that they could not afford to maintain employee benefits, even as they paid millions to a small number of their top executives. The measure was designed to bring a balance to the way the District allocates its resources and free up more funding for frontline workers, and came at a time when the Occupy movement had created a national conversation about wage and benefit inequality.”
The statement continued:
“Subsequent to filing the signatures for Measure M, statewide Propositions 30 and 32 were placed on the ballot and became the main focus of the union’s political work because of the immediate and massive impact of those measures on working people across the state and the future of education in California. The focus by SEIU-UHW members on those two initiatives helped pass Proposition 30 and defeat Proposition 32.”
Chris Ernst, a spokeswoman for the hospital, said she did not wish to comment on Lynch’s statement. She said via email that it is the hospital administration’s view that Measure M would greatly damage the hospital’s ability to recruit and maintain top talent.
Now that we have taken the ability of the elected board of the hospital out of the business of negotiating salary for the executives of the hospital we should now be empowered to reduce the excessive union negotiated wage and benefit package by the ballot
Unions have not only outlived their usefulness, they are actively destroying free commerce. They will destroy the very organizations that employ them and many honest working people.
California voters are dupes & suckers. It is laughable how easily they are manipulated. Measure M & Prop 30 are classic examples.
It’s that 47% that just take and don’t contribute with talent and hard work.
The top level adminsitrators are greedy and they are using the so called free market, market condition,blah blah to steal more. None of these adminsitrators are really worth what they are paid now and they are not worth even if they make 50% less. They need to be put behind prison for screwing us for so long. They are overcharging us the clients (the patients) and keep more of it for themselves before the average worker gets a dime. I have no problem in the average worker making decent money but the adminsitrators are rotten thieves. They will simply go somewhere else and steal since they can never be put in prison.
Isn’t there a judge that can overturn this right away?
As a divorced-single parent, with an AA, I work hard daily to provide for my children. My executive -ex made great money, but spent it and then some on himself. He lost his job, and now we get bare minimum in child support. We at the bottom struggle to make ends meet, while administraters shift the cost of unaffordable health care to our shoulders. The rich make unthinkable riches so they can afford multiple homes, they ‘steal from us at the bottom’ with no shame or guilt..
Passing measure M was a great step for fairness and control of the costs at the Hospital. We also need a measure to force the board to sell the out of district Hospital in Los Gates that was recently added to the tax payers costs in this district. As for unions if it wasn’t for them the rich would pay us all $8 an hour, we need to support unions for the good of all, but the rich of course.
Never cross picket lines
Ronin is 100% correct. Unions are destroying free enterprise and perverting market forces. The National Right to Work Legal Defense group should get notified about this result. NRTWLDF has a great track record of fighting union abuses.
While the union may have seen this as a bargaining chip, many of us who voted for it did so to stop the out-of-control “compensation” packages that typify modern-day board decisions.
OR, maybe it is just that you have no inside information about either the Hospital administration or School district funding from the State.
It certainly could be that!
Hopefully, I am wrong. But, unfortunately, I believe, our fair city has just created a system where the Hospital will be unable to get great administrators. So, we will have mediocre or worse, and the costs will go up, the service will go down.
And, I will start driving to Stanford.
I don’t hold with pay caps, if you want good talent that is proven you pay more, if you don’t and just want someone who will work without proven talent. This is what you are going to get with pay caps. I love how people go on about the free market, it sounds fine. But if you get out of school you are going to look at who offers the best, who pays the bests, you aren’t going to waste your time with a low paying job. 347,000 dollars for a CEO in a area that seems to want the best, best care, the best that someone can offer, and yet keep up standards instead of spending time looking another high paying job.