A majority of the employees of the Oak Valley Hospital District — including those working at the Oak Valley Care Center — have signed a petition seeking representation by the United Steelworkers Health Care Workers Council, according to union officials.

Approximately 35 Oak Valley Hospital District employees showed up at the district’s monthly board meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 27 in support of the move to unionize.

Christine Courtney, a registered nurse who works in Oak Valley Hospital’s emergency room, read a statement to the OVHD board of directors where she asked the board to approve a request from a group of employees to form a union.

According to Bob Gooch, an organizer with the United Steelworkers Health Care Workers Council, OVHD employees have been working to unionize non-management and non-confidential employees since last fall.

He said the district has denied the request.

At the heart of the conflict is the question of how OVHD employees will go about forming a union. Some employees, and the United Steelworkers Union, claim the law supports their efforts based on a petition signed by a majority of the employees it intends to represent.

The district maintains it is willing to support the employees’ efforts to join a union, but the decision must be made by secret ballot.

In the letter to the board, Courtney said there have been many assumptions about why employees were seeking union representation.

“First, let us tell you what this union is not about; the money,” she told the board. “If it were only about the money, we could choose to work somewhere else.”

Courtney said although employees are at the front lines, OVHD management has not listened to their input regarding patient care.

“Yet time and time again, our suggestions and recommendations are never taken into consideration,” she said.

Courtney said the union is committed to working with management to improve the quality of care patients receive.

“Please respect our legal right to form a union,” she said. “We also request that funds not be diverted to attorneys and consultants as a means of delaying our union. A clear majority of us have signed a petition asking for the United Steelworkers to be recognized as our collective bargaining agent and we respectfully ask the board to do the right thing and recognize our union.”

John Friel, the chief executive officer for OVHD, released a statement where he said the district already has collective bargaining with ambulance paramedics and emergency medical technicians. He said the law allows collective bargaining, but added there are protocols and laws that must be followed.

“First, let me clearly state that Oak Valley Hospital District supports our employees’ right to decide whether or not they want third party representation,” Friel said in the statement, adding that employees deserve the right to decide to join a union by a secret vote.

“In 1998 the OVHD Board enacted a resolution consistent with state law that guaranteed employees the right to decide the question of union representation through a democratically conducted secret ballot election. This resolution is formally referred to as the Rules and Regulations for the Administration of Employer-Employee Relations at Oak Valley Hospital District.

“In 2001, state law was amended to provide for recognizing a union as the employees’ representative without a secret ballot election under certain circumstances. The Steelworkers argue that the amendments enacted after our rules and regulations were already in effect should function to deny our employees the right to make their decision by secret vote at this time,” he said in the release.

In the statement Friel said there are several other important, but more technical, issues that also exist regarding the steelworkers union’s demand related to the composition and location of any potential bargaining units.

“The District’s Rules and Regulations provide for a fair and expeditious process for the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Steelworkers Union to challenge the district’s findings in this matter. We are fully cooperating.

“The district’s board and management remain fully committed to guaranteeing our employees’ right to make a free and fully informed decision in determining whether or not to seek union representation,” Friel’s statement indicated.

Gooch delivered a letter to OVHD board members at the meeting authored by Susan Garea, an attorney for the United Steelworkers Union, appealing the district’s decision.

In the letter, Garea argued the district was not following current law.

Citing the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act (MMBA), a section of state law that regulates employer/employee relations, Garea said in the letter the district had erred in its decision.

“The CEO’s argument that the MMBA allows employers to create and maintain provisions that conflict with other provisions of the MMBA, then, is completely unfounded, and rejected by the test of the statute and clear precedent.”

Garea wrote that “in the context of this particular dispute the law is clear,” in that the district can adopt regulations for elections, but may not hold elections when the MMBA requires recognition based on signatures.

The board did not take any action. The next regular hospital board meeting is Wednesday, Feb. 24.