A walk out by Georgetown University Medical Center staff planned for Monday, Nov. 25 was averted when workers and management reached a last-minute agreement over contract disputes.
The negotiators reached a tentative two-and-a-half year contract agreement an hour before the planned walk-out, and on the following Wednesday, the workers agreed to ratify the temporary agreement.
Georgetown University sold the Medical Center to MedStar, a private hospital management company, in 2000 to cut financial losses incurred by University ownership of the hospital.
The temporary agreement, which has not been finalized, is based on three major points, said walk out organizer and representative of Service Employees International Union Local 1199E-DC,Eliyahu Rabin. First, no subcontracting of union work would be allowed. Second, workers would receive a pay increase of 3.2 percent per year in addition to their current salaries. Finally, in order to insure that health care costs remain within the reaches of working-class families, the workers would continue to pay only 15 percent of the total healthcare premium.
The contract dispute began at the end of June when the contract extension expired after having been extended upon MedStar’s purchase of the Medical Center.
According to Georgetown Solidary Committee member Nick Laskowski (CAS ‘03), when MedStar Health bought the hospital from the University, it renewed the existing contract between management and the workers’ union without any negotiations. Since the June expiration of this contract, the Medical Center staff have been working without a contract while union representatives and MedStar management attempted to compromise on a new contract.
In October, with negotiations falling through, the union secured the right to give the management 10 days notice before taking such actions as walking out, explained Rabin.
“Never in the [SEIU]’s history at Georgetown University Hospital had the workers taken such steps,” Rabin said.
In the weeks leading up to the walk-out date, workers demonstrated their dissatisfaction by wearing stickers with slogans such as “Quality Healthcare Jobs By Any Means Necessary,” according to Rabin.
GSC was involved in promoting the rights of the medical center workers. Students showed support by distributing leaflets on campus, attending the negotiations and collecting 1,544 student signatures in support of the workers’ right to a new and fair contract.
“I hope that MedStar will remember that it must act responsibly in keeping with the values of the Jesuit university which houses and makes Georgetown University Hospital the esteemed research institution that it is,” Laskowski said.
