Budget cuts harm both workers and patients

  Mitra Ebadolahi Ebadolahi is a
third-year international development studies and history student
who believes that the forces of good will kiss evil on the lips. To
get more information on the labor struggle at UCLA, e-mail her at
[email protected].

Click Here for more articles by Mitra Ebadolahi

Maria Chilcott has been a UCLA Medical Center staff member for
nearly 20 years. Currently, she works as a Unit Support Associate,
whose primary responsibilities are cleaning and maintaining
sanitary patient rooms and floors, changing linens and trash
liners, removing biohazardous waste, and sterilizing rooms between
patients. Additionally, she often acts as a gofer, running to the
Medical Center pharmacy and storerooms for needed supplies and
medicines.

On average, Maria works 40 hours per week. Due to downsizing at
the Medical Center, she has been left single-handedly responsible
for the VIP floor of the hospital, attending to nearly 30 hospital
beds alone. She must sterilize rooms in minutes, unable to take the
time she needs to do a thorough job because there is always another
patient waiting for a bed. Due to the strenuous work and stressful
conditions, she recently developed tendonitis in her wrists.

Things weren’t always this bad. In 1993, when the Center
developed the USA position, 160 staff members served approximately
250 patients (American Federation of State County, and Municipal
Employees, Local #3299).

Today, because of changes in management and UCLA’s decision to
prioritize budget cuts over patient care, 100 USAs must attend to
over 350 patients. As a result, the quality of services has
suffered, and the workers, who take pride in their work and wish to
provide the best care available, are left physically unable to
handle their skyrocketing workloads.

To add insult to injury, the Medical Center has decided to
reward Maria and her USA colleagues for all their hard work by
announcing further employee cutbacks of up to 30 percent, leaving
just 70 USAs to handle this ever-increasing number of patients.
Such a cut will inevitably lead to dramatic changes in patient care
at UCLA.

The dilemma facing the USAs are nothing new. Last year, in order
to save literally 1 cent per pound of linen laundered, UCLA
administrators decided to subcontract the Laundry Facility to the
lowest bidder: Sodexho Marriot, a corporation notorious for labor
abuse . In a split second, hundreds of workers were left uncertain
of their futures, their job security completely eliminated,their
wages threatened and their health benefits slashed.

Only after major organizing efforts by the workers, allied UCLA
students, and the local chapter of the AFSCME, was the
subcontracting effort thwarted and labor rights secured.

Illustration by HINGYI KHONG/Daily Bruin Then, as now, workers
and students pressed the question: are these cuts really necessary?
According to Mark Speare, senior associate director of patient
relations and human resources at the UCLA Medical Center, efforts
to downsize and subcontract the labor force reflect pressing
financial problems facing the university. As he stated in a Daily
Bruin interview last year, "the actions (the Medical Center has)
had to take in the past year related to our financial performance
maintains us as a viable provider of health services and as a
teaching service for the university. If we didn"t take these
actions, (we could no longer be) available." ("UCLA
agrees to hire those affected by shutdowns,"News, June 2,
2000.)

It is critical, however, to scrutinize UCLA’s claims of imminent
bankruptcy in light of its actual budget. Anyone who has walked
around this campus can see how wealthy the university is. The UC
chancellors receive six-figure salaries, which continue to rise,
thanks to our ever-increasing student fees. Exactly what are we
paying for? Worker abuse? Negligence?

Just recently, the UC campuses with medical centers was forced
to pay over $20 million in Medicare fines for billing errors. Why
are workers being asked to pay for such mistakes? The numbers just
aren"t adding up.

Furthermore, attempts to downsize the Center have profound
implications for both patients and workers. As administrators
scramble to save pennies in a race to the bottom, the quality of
crucial daily supplies such as trash bags and disinfecting
solutions has become poorer and poorer.

In a place where human waste and body fluids are omnipresent,
workers need access to the best products in order to safeguard
their own health as well as to guarantee a sterile environment to
sick patients. Each USA often develops a close personal
relationship with his or her patients, and this makes it doubly
difficult to stand by and witness dramatic drops in the quality of
care provided.

Nosocomial infections, which are infections that occur within
hospitals, will become more and more frequent if quality care is
flung aside. Many patients, especially those in late stages of
cancer, must have an absolutely sterile environment due to their
ravaged immune systems. Imagine such a patient being placed in a
poorly-cleaned room formerly occupied by an individual sick with
contagious pneumonia. Clearly, this is a life or death dilemma.

These proposed cuts also violate workers’ rights to fair wages
and job security, as more workers are being classified as "casual"
or per diem workers rather than career employees. These workers are
responsible for the same tasks as their career-designated
counterparts; however, in order to save money, the Medical Center
refuses to hire them as "careers."

Essentially, this precludes most workers from receiving the
salaries they deserve, obtaining guaranteed hours per week, or
receiving benefits. Denying USAs health insurance is especially
ironic, since these health care workers must labor in a highly
contagious environment where they may be infected by their own
patients.

Yet the workers keep coming back. For the majority, serving as a
USA or Medical Center employee is a job in which they take great
pride; USAs deeply feel the commitment they have made to providing
excellent care to their wards. In organizing, these employees have
resolutely avoided striking; according to AFSCME organizers, many
workers have stated that they do not wish to place innocent
patients in the middle of their own fight for decent treatment.

It is high time that UCLA lived up to its self-proclaimed
identity as a great university and began treating its workers like
human beings rather than dispensable machines. The university must
stop plans for downsizing and realistically assess how such
cutbacks will negatively impact workers and patients throughout the
Medical Center.

As students at UCLA, it is also our duty to help Medical Center
employees hold our administration responsible to workers’ rights.
By standing in solidarity with workers, we may help provide
critical momentum to move the struggle for fair treatment forward.
We must use our privileged voices to help spread the word about the
on-going labor struggles here at UCLA. We can attend rallies and
show our support to the workers, who are often hesitant to demand
what’s fair for themselves and their families after being
intimidated by supervisors and anti-union managers.

If we ever hope to be proud of being Bruins, we must act against
such blatant violations of labor rights occurring right here on our
campus, remembering that an injustice anywhere is a threat to
justice everywhere.