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Health care workers at San Ramon Regional Medical Center and other hospitals under the same company are seeking to draw awareness to challenges they say are faced by staff amidst union negotiations and following years of staffing shortages and employee burnout spurred on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Workers from hospitals under Tenet Healthcare kicked off a series of pickets throughout the state on July 11, with SRRMC workers planning next Friday (July 21) as the date for their protest locally.
"The labor union that represents some of our employees, SEIU — United Healthcare Workers (SEIU-UHW), is planning to hold a picketing event outside of San Ramon Regional Medical Center on July 21," SRRMC officials said in a statement on July 12. "We are currently negotiating with the union, bargaining in good faith to reach an agreement on a contract."
SRRMC officials and union organizers both emphasized that the hospital would remain open and operational, with participating union members rotating their time outside the hospital during breaks from work and continuing to care for patients.
"While we value all of our employees who are represented by the SEIU-UHW, we are disappointed that the union is taking this action," SRRMC officials said. "Our focus is to ensure the best possible outcome for our hospital-based service, maintenance, and technical employees."
However, officials with the union representing workers at SRRMC contend that the parent company, Tenet Healthcare, would be quicker to address staffing challenges and find ways to retain hospital employees rather than assigning what they say is an increasing amount of work to a steadily decreasing and burnt out workforce.
"They are bargaining with us, but we've brought up the short staffing and the patient care issues many times, and that's what they're not responding to," said Renee Salas, who represents SRRMC workers with SEIU-UW. "We're trying to draw their attention to the most important thing in the community."
Salas said that certified nursing assistants (CNAs) are among the most heavily impacted by staffing shortages, with one worker often being assigned to as many as 40 patients. She said workloads like this take a toll on everyone on the ground in a hospital, from physicians, nurses, CNAs and other staff to patients themselves.
"It's just not fair to the health care workers and it's not fair to the patients that are going to the hospital to have care," Salas said, pointing also to the frustration this can cause for family members of hospital patients.
Short staffing also takes a toll on the security and safety of hospitals such as SRRMC, Salas said.
"An issue throughout the hospitals is that there are people who have been injured at work because there's not enough staff for them to do their job," Salas said.
While hospital workers face a range of occupational hazards, Salas said that one that has become increasingly common amidst staffing shortages is assaults by unruly patients and visitors.
"That's a super common thing, and it seems like those types of things have been more common since the pandemic hit," Salas said.
Salas and SEIU-UW spokesperson Maria Leal said that union organizers would conceivably be willing to call off planned pickets at SRRMC and other facilities if they were confident in robust plans to address challenges the actions are seeking to highlight by Tenet administrators.
"I think that if they said 'we have a plan; here's our plan,' and we agree with that plan, then yes we would call the picket off, but only if us as the members of the staff inside the hospital knew that was something that could truly fix the problem," Salas said.
Salas added that she, Leal, and other union organizers were seeking to bring attention to the issues facing workers on the ground with the picket in order to spur hospital administration into taking action on staffing shortages and retention challenges.
"They're not making fixing the issue a priority," Salas said. "They listen to us when we tell them the issues happening in the facility, but they're not taking action to fix the problem."
The SEIU-HW picket outside SRRMC at 6001 Norris Canyon Road is scheduled from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. next Friday (July 21).
