News and Press

Citrus Valley nurses vote to join union
January 30, 2006
by Kevin Smith, The San Gabriel Valley Tribune

West Covina - Registered nurses at Citrus Valley Medical Center, one of the the largest remaining nonunion hospitals in Los Angeles County, have voted to join the California Nurses Association.

Roy Hong, the association's lead organizer, said his union will now represent more than 700 nurses at Citrus Valley's Queen of the Valley campus in West Covina and at the Inter-Community location in Covina.

In a secret ballot election Friday supervised by federal labor board officials, the nurses voted 358 to 247 to join the CNA.

Hong said the nurses are unionizing to improve employee benefits, establish a "fair compensation plan" and adhere to the nurse-to-patient ratio laid out in the nurses' contract.

"Right now the nurses have merit pay, which is based on management evaluating each nurse once a year and giving them a percentage pay increase," he said. "The problem is there's a lot of subjectivity involved with that."

The CNA is seeking a "step system" of pay, which would boost wages based on an employee's years of experience, Hong said.

"If you are a 10-year nurse, you'd know exactly what you'll get this year, next year and so on," he said.

Hong said new nurses are also often recruited at a higher rate of pay because of the state's nursing shortage - a situation that creates an inequitable wage environment.

"If you worked somewhere for 10 years and then they hired someone new at a higher rate of pay ... you wouldn't be very happy," he said. "The only way to fix this is with a pay grid."

Lisa Foust, vice president of human resources for Citrus Valley Health Partners, parent company of Citrus Valley Medical Center, disputed Hong's characterization of the pay system.

"The concern sounds as though there are many employees who don't receive pay increases in any given year," she said. "But over 97 percent of employees throughout our entire organization received increases because they did their job and met or exceeded standards of performance."

The other 3 percent didn't, she said.

Foust said Citrus Valley goes to great lengths to ensure that its hourly pay rates are competitive with that of surrounding medical facilities.

Hong also said Citrus Valley has also been "cutting corners here and there" with its nurse-to-patient ratios.

"In the Direct Observation Unit we have nurses crying every day when they go home," he said. "They are given too many patients. They are coming way too close to putting patients in danger."

Foust also took issue with that a well.

"We closely follow Title 22, which is a section of the Department of Health and Human Services' regulation that mandates staffing ratios at acute-care hospitals," she said. "But nursing is hard work and we acknowledge that."

Hong said the nurses are assembling a negotiating team that will conduct a survey to establish their labor demands.

"Then we want to sit down to negotiate," he said. "We expect to begin negotiations in about a month."

Foust said Citrus Valley would prefer to deal directly with it employees but will approach any change with an open mind.

"If these election results are certified by the National Labor Relations Board we will bargain good faith," she said.