PUBLIC LETTER: NUHW letter re: Hazel Hawkins

This public letter was contributed by National Union of Healthcare Workers Bargaining Committee Member, Valerie Aquinaldo. The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent BenitoLink or other affiliated contributors. Lea este artículo en español aqui.

We are healthcare workers at Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital, who serve on our union’s contract bargaining team and are committed to reaching an agreement that will help our hospital provide the best possible care for our community.

Unfortunately, Hazel Hawkins CEO Mary Casillas appears unwilling to reach a fair agreement that can help restore safe-staffing levels and recruit and retain the caregivers we need to do right by patients.

Our coworkers do nearly every job at Hazel Hakins: provide bedside care, operate life-saving breathing tubes, register patients, help doctors during surgeries, take x-rays, clean rooms and feed patients.

Many of us live in San Benito County and take pride in caring for our friends and neighbors. We kept working at our community hospital even after Casillas and hospital management took away our pensions, eliminated our affordable health plans and sharply reduced our vacation allotments in connection to a bankruptcy filing that was later dismissed by a federal judge, who determined that the district’s finances did not qualify for bankruptcy protection.

The damage from that invalid bankruptcy is still being felt inside the hospital. We lost dozens of good caregivers and we now find ourselves understaffed and often working through our breaks to make sure that patients get the care they need.

We’re seeking to restore most of what was taken from us and win modest raises that will help Hazel Hawkins fully staff its services and allow us to keep caring for the community we love. We know that Hazel can afford it because the hospital’s board of directors recently gave Casillas an 11 percent raise based on what it called one of the hospital’s best financial performances in years.

We don’t think Casillas, who now makes more than $500,000 per year, should be rewarded for a financial performance that in part is connected to eliminating pensions and cutting benefits for frontline healthcare workers. That’s not a recipe for good care; it’s pure greed, and that’s what we’ve seen from Casillas and her management team at the bargaining table.

The board gave Casillas an 11 percent raise, but, after six months of negotiations, Casillas and her management team are proposing raises as low as 3 percent for hospital workers. This would leave healthcare workers struggling to get by in San Benito County and leave patients struggling to get the care they need at their community hospital.

We’re scheduled to begin mediation on March 19. We don’t want to strike, but we won’t let Casillas and her management team treat our hospital like it’s a Fortune 500 company that rewards the CEO for diminishing services and punishes workers who just want to do the best job they can.

Hazel Hawkins National Union of Healthcare Workers Bargaining Committee:

BenitoLink invites all community members to share their ideas and opinions. By registering as a BenitoLink user in the top right corner of our home page and agreeing to follow our Terms of Use, you can write counter opinions or share your insights on current issues.