NEWS STORY: Did Bishops Muddy Water on Unions and Catholic Healthcare?

c. 2000 Religion News Service ST. LOUIS _ A panel of experts on Roman Catholic healthcare issues say the U.S.Catholiuc Conference _ the social action arm of the U.S. bishops _ say the bishops may have muddied the waters with a recent statment on the relationship of unions and the church’s healthcare system. “The impression […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

ST. LOUIS _ A panel of experts on Roman Catholic healthcare issues say the U.S.Catholiuc Conference _ the social action arm of the U.S. bishops _ say the bishops may have muddied the waters with a recent statment on the relationship of unions and the church’s healthcare system.

“The impression they (the Catholioc conference) made was the Catholic church must support unions,” said Dr. Gerard Magill, Director of the Center for Health Care Ethics at St. Louis University Health Sciences Center.


Last fall, the USCC Committee for Domestic policy, met with Catholic healthcare and AFL-CIO leaders and released a working document called “A Fair and Just Workplace: Principles and Practices for Catholic Health Care.” In it the committee consistently refers to the ethical principle of solidarity and the church’s teaching on the rights of workers to be respresented by a union.

Magill said he believes the bishops’ conclusion is incorrect.

“Solidarity exhorts employers and employees to function together in a manner that enhances the common good,” Magill said. That idea indeed supports unions.

But Magill said he things the statement should have been expanded to include the Catholic ethical principle of subsidiarity.

“Subsidiarity encourages employers and employees to foster participation of individuals and groups for the common good, ordinarily at the local level of the organization,” he said. In other words, you don’t go outside the organization unless absolutely necessary.

Some Catholic health care managers in the audience agreed.

“Unions are another third party and health care is already crippled with the intervention of too many third parties like managed care and regulatory bodies,” said Ron Payton, director of Human Resources at St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Granite City, Ill.

Payton said he attended the lecture not only because it’s one of the hottest topics facing Catholic health care leaders and workers, but also because the United Steel Workers of America are attempting to organize his hospital.

If you ask the union about its effort, one of the first things they’ll tell you is that the bishops are on their side. The bishop’s document “goes way beyond neutrality,” said Gary Gaines, organizing coordinator for the steel workers union in southern Illinois. “It encourages people to join unions to improve their work lives,” Gaines added.


The bishop’s document clearly states that “church teaching affirms the right of workers to join unions or other associations.” That statement has become a rallying cry of many unions as they attempt to organize Catholic hospital workers across the country.

In the St. Louis area three Catholic hospitals have either recently taken a union vote or are gearing up for a vote. A sometimes bitter struggle is taking place in California between one of the largest Catholic hospital systems, U.S.Healthcare West, and the Service Employes International Union.

Gaines said the Steel Workers have had recent organizing successes in Kntucky, Minnesota and California, and at least two of those union victories occurred at Catholic facilities.

“Unions are suffering declining membership so they’re looking to health care as a ripe fertile field for membership,” Payton said.

The St. Louis University panel looked at why hospitals are so ripe for the union picking.

Joan Carter, a registered nurse, at the St. Louis University School of Nursing, said in 25 cases she read about, 23 mentioned patient care as the number one concern. “This is extremely important to nurses who consider themselves a patient advocate,” Carter said. Ten cases cited no empowerment as a concern. Only two cases mentioned wages.


Among the kinds of issues raised: Nurses at St. John’s Mercy Medical Center in St. Louis felt a union was needed. They voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers in July. Prior to the vote nurses called news conferences to issue statements condemning a system that they said seemed more concerned with profits rather than patients.

“More and more my colleagues and I go home and worry about the patients we’ve left behind because our staffing levels are not appropriate for how sick our patients are,” said Amy Helling, a registed nurse at St. John’s.

Carter said she understands why nurses are looking to unions for help, but she fears unions will ultimately violate the very ethical principle upon which they were brought into the health care picture: solidarity. “Solidarity is where everyone works for the common good of the patient,” Carter said.

“Unions split the workers from the management and that could be harmful to the patient,”Carter said.

Dr. Griffin Trotter, from the Center for Health Care Ethics at St. Louis University also cited the chief concerns of physicians as they begin considering unionization. His list included accomplishing what he called “the team task” of medicine, pay and benefits, and the work environment.

“We recognize the workers’ frustrations,” Magill said. “Their professional fulfillment is not being realized.”

But are unions needed to fix those problems, he asked.

Clearly, the bishops need to do more wrestling with the issue.

“”If we had given a lecture on universal health care, no one would have come,” Magill said, even though he believes the millions of uninsured is a more critical issue than unions. “But topically, unions are a hot potato,” he added.


“Catholic social teaching is that people have the right to unionize,” Payton said. “We’re not saying people don’t have the right to unionize, but most Catholic hospitals hold the position that unions don’t belong in the hospital,” he added.

It’s a fine line to walk, Payton said, and more direction from the bishops would help.

DEA END WICAI

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