AFSCME Battles Privatization
The war on privatization of public services goes on, on multiple fronts. Day in and day out, AFSCME members are making employers take a second — and sometimes third and fourth — look at contracts and programs that often promise false savings and deliver poor service. It’s a war fought not just for jobs, but for fair, accountable and accessible services. Following are three dispatches “from the trenches.”
Fighting the ‘Good Fight’ for Nebraska’s Mental Patients
LINCOLN, NEBRASKA
Nebraska is known for its tough-minded farmers and ranchers, and also for more than a few football die-hards.
So when state employees were thrown for a loss in their fight to prevent erosion of services in the state’s regional mental health centers, it was only natural that they would stand their ground against the de facto privatization plan.
Last year, employees at the state’s three regional mental health centers — Lincoln, Norfolk and Hastings — challenged an ill-conceived plan to move 200 out of 600 beds at the three centers and contract out certain critical services to community-based programs.
The “behavioral health redesign,” as the plan was formally known, had also threatened the jobs of roughly 400 employees at the three centers.
READY TO FIGHT. When it was announced in the spring of 1997, “Local 61 talked with center employees, asking them, ‘How do you feel about this?’” says Bill Arfmann, executive director of the Nebraska Association of Public Employees (NAPE)/AFSCME Local 61. “To a person, they said, ‘Let’s fight.’”
And fight they did.
“We didn’t disagree with them on philosophical grounds, about having people taken care of in the communities, if the communities were equipped to care for them properly,” explains Morgan Kupsinel, a human services treatment specialist at the Norfolk Center. “We supported the goal — it was their execution of it we were critical of.”
The employees were alarmed that staff input was largely ignored in the redesign, and worried that sufficient privately operated services for the seriously ill didn’t exist in the community.
The employees took on then-Director of Health and Human Services Jessie Rasmussen, James Wiley, then-behavioral health administrator for HHS, and other proponents of deinstitutionalization who supported the plan.
“We told Jessie Rasmussen, ‘Don’t toss away hundreds of years of experience,’” remembers Tom Tumbleson, a unit secretary for the Community Transition Program at the Regional Center in Lincoln.
COST-SHIFTING. Employees argued that the redesign was a “cost-shifting” rather than a “cost-saving,” and enlisted the aid of every other group who might be sympathetic — nurses, social workers, policemen, county attorneys, as well as patients’ families, and supporters in the community. They did radio spots, circulated editorial cartoons, provided interviews for a series of newspaper articles on the treatment of the mentally ill. And they knew they hit a nerve when Jessie Rasmussen chastised them publicly for the campaign.
They also befriended lawmakers who could help in the cause. Republican State Sen. Gene Tyson visited the workers and joked how it was scandalous that he — who came from the management side as a businessman in the steel industry — was in cahoots with union workers.
The group secured a critical piece of legislation — LB 1354 — which directed that state employees be deployed to assist in new community-based programs. By the fall, it had hammered out a mediated agreement approved by Gov. Ben Nelson’s office designed to protect the jobs of the center workers, place them in a manner that would enhance services, and also make sure that the community services were up to par.
That was the good news.
A NEW BALL GAME. In January, a new administration took over, led by former Lincoln mayor Mike Johanns, who had campaigned for governor on his record of privatizing city services.
On the positive side, the new administration canceled a number of consultants’ contracts, and also one with Liberty HC to recruit health professionals and top administrators. On the negative side, they’ve said they don’t intend to honor the mediated agreement — the Statement of Principles — and they’ve vetoed $1.8 million earmarked for the regional centers.
As of this writing, the adult Chemical Dependency Unit at Hastings is scheduled to close on Sept. 15, even though it’s acknowledged to be one of the best such programs in the state. A chemical dependency unit for 13- to 17-year-old boys is scheduled to open around the same time. The staff frets about what’s going to happen to the older patients who had been making progress at the center.
BEDS AND BUCKS. “They were looking at beds and money. They were not looking at human beings,” complains Mickey Heuertz, a licensed practical nurse at Hastings, about the turn of events since the redesign was announced.
The employees keep getting assurances that their jobs are safe, but they worry just as much about the quality of patient care.
“We’re not just here for self-interest,” Tom Tumbleson says simply. “We’re here for the patients.”
So the “good fight,” as Morgan Kupsinel calls it, will go on.
The employees plan to re-group and meet with the new governor in September, once more, to plead their case.
They’re no strangers to the threat of closings, and they tap into Midwestern resourcefulness in dealing with them.
Now the Nebraskans are working to plant and prepare for the next political season. The AFSCME veterans at the state’s regional centers know how to fight and win, and they’re working to cultivate the talents and energies of even more workers for the next round of confrontations.
By Chris Dodd
