Private Gain, Public Pain

The forces of privatization also suffered some reverses last year as labor showed time and again that when corporations come in, profits take precedence over people.

• When Ohio Council 8 members at the University of Cincinnati lost their long battle to keep the university hospital public, the publicity they had generated stood them in good stead. Under pressure from the Cincinnati community, non-profit University Hospital Inc. agreed to a contract that protected workers' pensions and included union shop, PEOPLE checkoff, job security, labor/management initiatives and a 12.5 percent raise over three years.

• It was a busy year for health care behemoth Columbia/HCA. California Attorney General Dan Lungren stood firm against the company, threatening to hold Sharp Healthcare's board of directors "personally liable" for $100 million to $200 million if the non-profit hospitals were sold to Columbia without further public scrutiny.
  
  Why was Lungren so suspicious?
  
  Well, if the example of the company's performance in Florida is any indication, Columbia/HCA may suffer from an odd personnel malady.
  
  In an effort to maximize profits, Columbia/HCA played personnel ping pong. It terminated 36 workers at Florida's New Port Richey Community Home Health Agency on April 10-but realized on April 19 that it had fired seven people too many and hired them back. When staff complained that nine of the fired workers had greater seniority than nine who retained their jobs, Columbia hired back the more senior employees and then fired nine workers with less tenure. No one wins in this game!

• Hospital privatization also spread to Boston, where the merger of public Boston City Hospital with a private non-profit hospital threatened the jobs and pensions of AFSCME members in Locals 1489, 787 and 2761 (Council 93). These 700 members stood firm in negotiations with newly formed private non-profit Boston Medical Center-and won seniority, bumping and recall rights, union shop, comparable pensions and improvements in health insurance options and shift differentials. Members also got their new employer to commit to carrying on the charitable mission of Boston City Hospital.

• With the livelihood of so many public health care workers in jeopardy, is it any wonder that over 2,600 California nurses opted to wear the AFSCME green? RNs at Sharp Healthcare in San Diego voted 1,114 to 622 to join AFSCME's United Nurses Associations of California/ National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, making them the largest nursing unit ever organized at one time under the National Labor Relations Act.

• New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson (R), pictured, chose to shoot the messenger when the state's corrections secretary, Karl Sannicks, told a legislative committee that privatizing the prisons wouldn't save much-if any-money. The governor, an advocate of privatization, fired the corrections official.

• AFSCME members at the Anna Veterans Home in Illinois spent a month on the picket line to win their first contract. They were joined by fellow members from Council 31-and by the replacement workers, who found conditions so awful that they too walked off the job and joined the union.