Deaconess nurses take union vote

Registered nurses at Deaconess Medical Center will vote today on whether to join a union.

The nurses rejected an organizing drive last year by a vote of 266-252.

However the Service Employees International Union 1199NW claimed hospital managers interfered with the election during the heated campaign.

The National Labor Relations Board agreed and called for the revote.

The NLRB was troubled that hospital administrators told nurses in the weeks leading up to last year’s vote that a 9 percent wage cut could be made permanent. The NLRB concluded such information equaled a threat, which isn’t allowed before an election.

The hospital lost an appeal last month, and the NLRB said the 650 nurses at Deaconess would vote again.

Kelley Leifer, a registered nurse in the hospital’s intensive care unit who has pressed for the union, said she believes the measure will pass this time. She claimed turnover among the nursing staff is high, morale is low and that union representation could curb the problem.

Deaconess has been operating under financial duress. The nonprofit hospital is saddled with rising charity care write-offs and inadequate reimbursements from federal Medicare and Medicaid programs, CEO Garman Lutz has said.

Responding to a $19 million loss for 2002, Deaconess cut wages by 9 percent for all but a few employees in early 2003 and suspended annual pay raises. The hospital’s top executives left soon afterward.

Lutz had been chief financial officer before he was promoted to CEO.

The savings immediately helped the bottom line and relieved some of the financial pressure.

The hospital has returned about 5.25 percent of the wage cuts, but fewer patients and the rising number of people left uninsured because of job and benefit losses among some of Spokane’s most prominent employers is taking its toll.

To right the books, Deaconess has enlisted the help of accounting heavyweight PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP to increase earnings and cut costs.

Rather than aggressively fight the organizing campaign, management has done little during the run-up to today’s vote.

“Regardless of the outcome, we will continue to work with our employees to make sure we are providing good-quality service and meeting the health care needs of our community,” hospital spokeswoman Janice Marich said in a prepared statement.

SEIU spokesman Carter Wright said the campaign has been low-key and positive. The nurses are among the last major groups of medical employees in Spokane that are not unionized.

Results are slated to be tallied today.