Union officials representing nearly 400 employees of the Jewish Home in San Francisco say they are astonished to be presented with an ultimatum by management.
On Dec. 29, Jewish Home CEO Daniel Ruth fired a letter to the union, saying that if members did not accept the Home’s current offer by noon Monday, Jan. 10, the offer would be revoked and replaced with a contract calling for lower starting wages for new hires and greater employee contributions to health care.
The timing of Ruth’s move startled members of the SEIU Local 250, who had just nixed a proposed five-day Christmas strike at the last minute at the behest of Sen. Barbara Boxer, who pledged her involvement in the Home’s labor dispute.
“In light of Sen. Boxer’s offer to intervene, we’re really taken aback by it, quite honestly. Basically, they’re saying if we don’t take something really bad which the workers have already voted down, they’re going to make it worse,” said Glenn Goldstein, the union’s director of organizing.
Ruth, meanwhile, said the letter was sent “because the Jewish Home wants labor peace. We are trying to assist and persuade the union and the Home’s contractual employees to reach a final agreement.”
Both sides have agreed to a meeting with representatives of Boxer’s office scheduled for Friday, Jan. 7.
Labor tensions have been simmering at the Jewish Home for months since the expiration of labor and management’s prior operating agreement. Claiming a dire financial situation, Ruth says it is now necessary for employees to partially fund their own health care. The union, meanwhile, claims the Jewish Home has cleared $34 million in profits over the past five years. The union is holding out for 100 percent employer-paid benefits and a 3 percent yearly pay increase for the 380 workers it represents.
When Jewish Home employees opted not to walk off the job, the biggest beneficiaries were undoubtedly the Home’s 430 residents.
Had the strike come to fruition, 96-year-old former labor consultant and lifetime activist Carl Vedro may have found himself helpless to avoid crossing a picket line for the first time in his life.
When SEIU employees staged a one-day strike in November, Vedro refused to allow replacement workers to feed him or enter his room. But the proposed five-day strike would have been too much for the nonagenarian to ignore.
For Jewish Home workers “to be out on the street while we’re inside being fed by the people who took their jobs, it’s unacceptable,” said the native New Yorker.
Boxer’s letter to union President Sal Rosselli urging workers to call off the strike and promising her involvement in the negotiating process achieved its intended result — though at a high price.
The union’s 11th-hour cancellation left the Jewish Home holding the bag for some $250,000 in non-refundable deposits for replacement workers, said Ruth.
“I remain at a loss why the union can continue to be so reckless when they know the Home has serious financial issues,” he said.
Said longtime Jewish Home nurse and shop steward Ruth Segarra, “The workers were really gung-ho; we were ready to do this strike.”
The involvement of Boxer — a Greenbrae Democrat whose mother spent her final days in the Home — was welcomed on all sides, particularly by the Jewish Home Family Council, a group of friends and relatives of residents formed in December over labor concerns.
“As family members, we support the institution, but we also support the caregivers,” said Ed Herzog, the co-chair. “We urge both sides to get together.”
While claiming impartiality, Herzog noted that the council was shocked that the Home had called residents’ family members before the proposed strike and attempted to convince them to take over some of the caregivers’ duties.
If and when both sides come back to the table, a long road must be traversed before an agreement is reached. Ruth has repeatedly bemoaned the union’s “knowingly misrepresenting” the Home’s financial state, a claim the union denies. Rosselli, meanwhile, accused Ruth — whom he referred to as “this CEO” — of “taking a position that’s absolutely unacceptable.”
Whatever comes of the labor situation, Vedro hopes it’s resolved sooner rather than later. The strife “creates a certain tension in this place and a dissatisfaction on the part of the staff. There’s an amount of uneasiness and that’s not good for the patients,” he said.