Santa Clara County Medical Workers Begin 3-Day Strike

After months of negotiations over a new contract failed to produce a deal, a group of Santa Clara County medical workers began a three-day strike on Monday.

Dozens of employees of the county’s hospital and public health system started picketing outside of Valley Medical Center in San José early Monday morning, chanting and waving signs as traffic whizzed by on Bascom Avenue, with some drivers offering up honks of support.

The workers are part of a group of roughly 200 striking clinical lab scientists, microbiologists and medical lab technicians represented by the Engineers and Scientists of California Local 20. The union’s members work at the Santa Clara County-run Valley Medical Center and O’Connor Hospital in San José, as well as St. Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy and county public health labs.

“I’m proud that we’ve come together to fight for our rights,” Jenny Gargarita, a clinical laboratory scientist, said Monday while picketing outside the hospital. She said her group doesn’t feel seen or heard and is disappointed negotiations have reached this point.

“I was really hoping that our union and the county could come to a fair agreement,” she said.

Union leaders said they are holding the unfair labor practice strike because the county is negotiating in “bad faith” during months-long talks that began in July. Their previous contract expired in September.

“These are dedicated public servants who provide critical, laboratory-related services primarily for our hospital system. And we look forward to being able to reach an agreement with them,” County Executive James Williams said Monday.

The county and union have agreed to many items of the contract so far, but the two parties are divided over two key issues, including whether the union will be allowed to hold any future “sympathy strikes” in solidarity with other unions that might go on strike.

Union officials said the county wants to strip that right from them and has proposed a broader array of “management rights” that workers are worried would allow the county to shift workers from one location to another without their input.

“The county has not been clear about what their intentions are with management rights,” Loan Yumul, a nuclear medicine technologist, said Monday. “And our concern is being transferred from one facility to the next and not having proper training or different equipment … So if we’re unfamiliar with it, it could be a detriment to our patients.”

Williams said the county has “not made a proposal to float or shift staff from one facility to another” and that his team welcomes the union’s engagement on any specific concerns they have over the language being proposed.

“All we’re seeking is very routine standard management rights and no-strikes language that ESC itself has agreed to with many, many, other public and private hospital systems,” Williams said Monday.

“Our hospitals provide essential life-saving services and it’s vital that we have assurance that when entering into a contract with our labor partner that we know that there’s going to be labor peace for the duration of that contract,” Williams said.

The latest public offer from the county is from December, which was rejected by the union. It included a total 15.85% wage increase for the union members over a four-year contract term, with 5% in the first year, followed by 4% in the second year, and 3% in each of the last two years.

Jay Sandhu, a clinical laboratory scientist and a part of the union’s negotiating team, said the county has tied its current wage increase proposals to the proposed changes about strikes and management rights, pushing the union into its first strike.

“We’ve been going back and forth, back and forth with the county. And we just want to have a fair negotiation,” Sandhu said.

The union and the county have, as recently as last week, been in confidential mediation for the ongoing negotiations, but both Williams and union representatives said Monday they are waiting for the other side to restart negotiations.

The first day of the strike for county medical workers also marked the beginning of the third straight week of a strike by transit workers employed by the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority over stalled contract negotiations.

Williams declined to comment on whether the VTA strike has affected the way his team is handling negotiations with the medical workers group, noting that union and labor negotiation situations are unique.

Sandhu said he hopes the strike his union is holding right now will help the county see how crucial employees like him are to the overall health care system.

“We may be a small group,” Sandhu said, “but what we do touches every aspect of patient care.”