Rumble on Rodeo

Last Friday — the same day the work ers walked off the job and the rabbis took out their ad — a clerical mini-delegation did lunch at Harkham’s other hotel, the Bel Air Summit, just down the hill from the Getty. The delegation included Father Joe Frazier (a priest at St. Andrew’s Episcopal in Torrance, and a member of the Chad Mitchell Trio way back in the ’60s), some CLUE lay activists and Summit Rodeo cook Oscar Garcia (who, after all, had the day off). At the conclusion of the meal, they asked to meet with Harkham and were greeted instead by Bruce Wenger, general manager of both Summit hotels, who struggled to maintain a modicum of composure, though it was clear he was already having one hell of a day and the last thing he needed was an encounter with a meddlesome priest and a more meddlesome reporter.

While repeating that all discussion of these issues should proceed at the negotiating table only, Wenger did allow as how Mr. Harkham had been "bombarded by misinformation from the religious community. And he’s disappointed by this: He does care about his fellow man." Until that care is displayed in ways more apparent to the employees of the Summit Rodeo, however, it’s a safe bet that Harkham & Co. will be subjected to a rising double whammy of worker walkouts and clerical censure. Already, CLUE has assembled the largest local collection of pro-labor religious activists since the heyday of Cesar Chavez. And with its victories on the Westside, Local 11 has shown itself to be a citywide force — in bargaining, in politics, in its ability to construct progressive coalitions — on behalf of low-wage L.A. workers. The hotel workers’ contract successes aren’t the only recent local labor breakthroughs. On April 1 and 2, the nurses at St. Vincent’s Hospital just west of downtown voted to unionize by a 179-119 margin — the first unionization of L.A.-area nurses in more than a decade. The vote culminated an 18-month campaign by the California Nurses Association (CNA), which began, says lead organizer Diane Hirsch-Garcia, with classes the CNA offered nurses on how to maintain standards in the age of the HMO. St. Vincent’s boasted a veteran nursing staff — 150 of its 300 nurses had at least 15 years’ seniority — and a history as one of L.A’s venerable Catholic hospitals. Things started to change a few years back when its owner, Catholic Healthcare West, began running the place in . . . well, in the way that hospitals are run in the ’90s. CNA talked with the nurses about a relatively new state law that mandates a ratio of one nurse for every two patients in a critical care unit, and that restricts nurses from being "floated" from one medical department to another if they lack the training in the particular specialty. "The big issue at St. Vincent’s was floating and staffing," Hirsch-Garcia says. Catholic Healthcare West didn’t take the campaign lying down; it got several nuns to call on the nurses to reject the union. For its part, the union put out a leaflet to the largely Catholic (and about 95 percent Filipino) nurses "about the Catholic Church supporting their right to organize," says Hirsch-Garcia. "We quoted the Pope." The CNA isn’t the only union targeting St. Vincent’s. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is currently engaged in a massive drive to organize workers at all the nonunion Catholic Healthcare West hospitals in California. SEIU has clearly become the union that sets the standard for organizing at a time when the movement as a whole is only just beginning to rediscover this lost art. Last year, SEIU organized 58,000 new members; this year, it is spending 47 percent of its budget on organizing (in a movement where the norm just two years ago was 3 percent). Unfortunately, in California, CNA and SEIU are at least as well known for fighting each other as they are for their organizing prowess. Two years ago, each union placed its own HMO-reform initiative on the ballot, ran ads against the other’s initiative, and managed to kill them both. A few months ago, CNA organizers showed up at a Bay Area hospital on the last day before the vote to certify an SEIU union there, bringing leaflets that said if the workers rejected SEIU, CNA could provide them with a real union. Now CNA is considering affiliating with the United Auto Workers, which would mean joining the AFL-CIO, creating the possibility that such turf disputes could be negotiated without major bloodshed. It would be nice if these two unions — among the precious few that actually organize — found some way not to kill off each other’s campaigns. Where’s George Mitchell when you need him?