Union adds 450 at Empire Health

About 450 more employees at Empire Health Services joined a large union that now represents about 2,000 caregivers at Empire’s two Spokane hospitals, Deaconess Medical Center and Valley Hospital and Medical Center.

The vote Thursday night brings nearly every employee of the hospital system into the Service Employees International Union District 1199NW at a delicate time. Empire recently accepted the resignation of CEO Garman Lutz and continues to wrestle with myriad financial challenges, among them rising charity cases and bad debts, lagging Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates and an unexpected drop in patient numbers.

Union spokeswoman Chris Barton said SEIU has an important role to play at Empire, which lost $7.5 million during the first six months of the year.

“We’re committed to getting this thing turned around,” she said. “We believe SEIU as an organization can help by bringing resources into the picture.”

SEIU is the largest union representing health care workers in the state and has added significant political muscle during the past decade.

Empire spokeswoman Janice Marich said the hospitals would work with SEIU, but expressed disappointment that fewer than half of the employees eligible to vote said “yes” to the union. At Deaconess, she said, the vote in favor of unionizing was 142 to 108, out of 365 eligible voters. At Valley, Marich said the vote to join SEUI was 40 to 12 out of 88 eligible voters.

The employees voting to join SEIU included certified nursing assistants, phlebotomists, transporters and others.

Registered nurses and technicians at Empire Health have all voted to join SEIU in the past 18 months, turning into a union shop one of the last big hospital systems in the state whose workers had rejected organizing campaigns in the past.

Empire Health administrators and union negotiators are still working on an initial labor contract.

Barton said the sides are closing in on agreements regarding issues she described as “non-economic.”

She said Empire’s financial struggles are well-known and employees understand that dramatic pay increases won’t happen right away.

“We’re looking for some momentum and commitment to bargaining that would go a long ways to stabilizing this work force,” she said.