Hartford Courant (Connecticut), December 23, 2006, Saturday

Copyright 2006 The Hartford Courant Company
All Rights Reserved
Hartford Courant (Connecticut)

December 23, 2006 Saturday
5 NORTHWEST CONNECTICUT/SPORTS FINAL EDITION

SECTION: MAIN; Pg. A1

HEADLINE: FROM A HERO BACK TO A FOE;
YALE-NEW HAVEN HOSPITAL'S PRESIDENT IS AGAIN ON THE OUTS WITH THE UNION

BYLINE: KIM MARTINEAU; Courant Staff Writer

DATELINE: NEW HAVEN --

BODY:
The president of Yale-New Haven Hospital was hailed last spring as a hero for promising that workers at her hospital would be free to vote on a union without threats or intimidation.
Marna Borgstrom's commitment led the city to fast-track the permits needed for the hospital to start building a $470 million cancer center. But Borgstrom's relationship with the union has been deteriorating ever since.
An election scheduled for this week was called off after an independent arbitrator cited Borgstom's administration for serious labor law violations. The hospital says the violations were an isolated incident and won't happen again. The mayor and the union contend a fair election is now impossible.
Amid the battle, an old master's thesis has surfaced that has union leaders wondering if Borgstrom ever intended to give them a fair shake. As a graduate student at Yale, Borgstrom spent one summer at a hospital in San Jose, Calif., helping to break the union there. She wrote up her findings in a 1979 thesis that was discovered this week in a Yale library.
In Borgstrom's study, an employee sick of paying union dues schemed with management to decertify the union. Managers ousted one of their own to placate workers. They also implemented ``Operation Speak-Easy'' to listen to employee complaints while monitoring union support. In the end, the union fell. ``The Hospital should strive for union-free status,'' her thesis concludes.
In an interview Friday, the 52-year-old CEO cautioned against drawing conclusions from views she expressed in her 20s that she confessed she could scarcely recall. ``Just about everything has changed in 30 years,'' she said. ``What I knew about management at that time could have filled a thimble.''
But labor activists have been quick to find parallels. Bob Proto, president of the Greater New Haven Labor Council, accused Borgstrom and her board of systematically trying to sabotage the union election.
``That management mind-set has stayed consistent with Marna,'' he said. ``It's clear they don't believe workers need a union or should even have a fair process to have one.''
At the time Borgstrom was writing her thesis, Congress had extended collective bargaining rights to hospital workers, who rapidly began to unionize. In her thesis, Borgstrom showed how managers could fight back subtly.
The story began with a disgruntled clerk in accounting. ``Nancy,'' as she is called, did not like paying dues and resented the union's secrecy. After repeated meetings with management, she filed a petition for decertification and began persuading her co-workers to sign.
One office stood in the way: business. There, employees chafed under the ``iron hand'' of their boss, Borgstrom writes. Without union protection, they worried that they might be fired. Managers eliminated the problem by forcing their colleague to resign. A few management innovations, and the union no longer seemed as enticing to workers. Wages and benefits were competitive. Employee feedback sessions, in the form of Operation Speak-Easy, gave workers a sense of empowerment.
The union threw a cocktail party the night before the election but hardly anyone came. The next day, workers voted 34-11 against the union. The union appealed, saying the hospital had intimidated workers, misrepresented union policies and threatened to close the hospital if it won. The National Labor Relations Board dismissed the complaints.
Management's role in decertifying the union could have been construed as a labor violation, Borgstrom admits in her thesis. If the union had had access to some key documents, she writes, it might have mounted a more effective challenge.
Yale awarded Borgstrom a master's degree in hospital administration. She went to work for Yale-New Haven, rose quickly to become vice president, and was named president last year.
One night last March she surprised local clergy. In a former homeless shelter at Sacred Heart Church, Borgstrom clasped hands with city and church leaders and prayed. The city had stalled approvals for the hospital's cancer center until a list of demands were met, including a fair union election. With a contentious public hearing looming, Borgstrom was ready to negotiate. Two days later, the hospital came to an agreement and Borgstrom was praised for meeting community leaders on their home turf. A new relationship seemed possible.
Recently that hope evaporated. In November, the Service Employees International Union called for a union vote. More than half the 1,800 union-eligible service workers -- nurse's aides, housekeepers and janitors -- had signed union cards. But in the weeks that followed, managers systematically tried to discourage them from unionizing, SEIU claims. An arbitrator, mutually agreed to by both sides, cited Yale-New Haven for numerous violations. A manager was found to have forced all 165 workers under her supervision to attend anti-union meetings on work time, where the loss of overtime and benefits was threatened if the union won. Another 200 managers reportedly were authorized to hold similar meetings. The NLRB called off the election last week at the union's request.
Borgstrom says the arbitrator blew a single incident out of proportion. Workers came to managers with questions, she said, and meetings were held to address them. ``We've always held voluntary meetings -- I've personally done them for eight to nine years,'' she said.
Yale President Richard Levin, no friend of labor unions, swiftly condemned the hospital's actions last week and tried to distance himself from the conflict. Mayor John DeStefano Jr. called for a change in the hospital's governing board and proposed that the hospital let workers hold a card-check election, a method more favorable to unions. The hospital has demonstrated why a union is needed, he said Thursday.
``What the hospital proved in this case is they're a lousy employer, willing to use its power to crush people and intimidate them,'' he said.
As the prospect of a union election neared, a rising concern comes across in letters, obtained by The Courant, that Borgstrom sent employees. In April, her tone was neutral. ``While the hospital does not believe that our employees need to be represented by a union,'' she wrote, ``you will have the right to decide this question for yourself.''
In July, she announced SEIU had started its formal campaign and emphasized her opinion in bold type. ``If there is an election our position is clear: we do not believe a union is in the best interest of our employees, our patients or our Hospital.''
Faced with pressures to contain costs, many hospital managers are as opposed to unionization as they were when Borgstrom was in graduate school. The health care industry remains attractive to unions because jobs continue to grow as the population ages. And unlike textiles or car parts, the sick and elderly can't be shipped overseas. A consulting business of more than $1 billion a year has grown up around stopping unions.
The top reason health care workers unionize is to advocate for quality patient care, said Kate Bronfenbrenner, a professor at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. They can petition for increased staffing and regular hours, allowing them to ``take that extra minute to hold the hand of a dying patient,'' she said.
Yale-New Haven continues to insist its wages and benefits are competitive and a union is unnecessary. ``We are professionals at running a hospital,'' said Borgstrom. ``We think we're a really good employer.''

Contact Kim Martineau at kmartineau@courant.com.