After seven months of bargaining discussions, members of Service Employees International Union United Healthcare Workers (SEIU-UHW)—the union representing employees at Marian and French hospitals—announced plans to strike against parent company Dignity Health beginning at 11 p.m. on June 26.
The strike is scheduled to last 72 hours, ending at 11 p.m. on June 29.
“We’ve been up front with Dignity from the beginning that our goals are simple: protecting our benefits and job security, negotiating fair pay and resolving workplace issues in 90 days,” read a flyer on SEIU-UHW’s website.
The union claims Dignity Health is proposing “unacceptable concessions,” including cuts to benefits, wage freezes, and more.
In a commentary that ran in the Sun on June 14, Marian president and CEO Chuck Cova said, “Dignity Health is not asking for wage cuts or to eliminate fully employer paid benefits; we simply need to ‘slow down’ the rate of increases for salary and benefits in the future.”
This article appears in Jun 21-28, 2012.
