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  CHRIS BACKLEY/Daily Bruin Mark Speare (foreground), of UCLA Health Care, hears hospital service workers voice their complaints Wednesday afternoon.

By Benjamin Parke

Daily Bruin Reporter

A few dozen medical service staff crowded into an elevator lobby – some with turquoise work smocks sticking out from underneath their green union shirts.

Before them, a man neatly attired in black pants, a navy blue shirt and striped tie stood at an office threshold.

“Good afternoon. How are you?” said the man. “I’m Mark Speare. Welcome.”

As UCLA Health Care’s associate director for patient relations and human resources, Speare greeted service staff from the university’s medical center who had clambered up a snaking stairwell to his office in the Bank of America building on Westwood Boulevard.

In the 10-minute Wednesday afternoon encounter, the workers aired grievances on what they perceive as unfair treatment by hospital management. Among their concerns were cutbacks in their department – resulting, they said, in overwork for remaining staff – and the “per diem” status of a number of workers and its consequent lack of benefits.

“We feel like we’re getting the shaft,” worker Michael Burgess told Speare.

For two years, Burgess has done cleaning work as an employee of the unit support associates department of the Medical Center. He said many of the workers in his department don’t make enough money for the amount of work they do – because they’re classified as “per diem” workers, and not career employees.

He said cutbacks have added to the problem.

“We barely can do the job as we are because of the shortness of staff,” Burgess told Speare, complaining that the hospital was getting dirtier because the cleaning can’t get done.

Another employee of the department, Willa Carter, said its workforce has been cut from 200 to about 120 personnel recently, with another 30 percent cut in the works.

Carter, Burgess and others who gathered in the lobby are members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, which is negotiating with the university to obtain full-time positions for staff who now work on a per diem basis. Such staffers are found in a variety of departments such as respiratory therapy, care partners and the kitchen.

UC unions recently won a victory in which the university agreed to classify “casual” workers as career employees if they work 1,000 hours per year. The unions had complained that the casual status meant less pay and benefits for essentially the same work as full-time staff.

Speare said the reclassification wasn’t applied to per diem employees because of uncertainty as to when those workers would be needed.

“Our census can fluctuate by 120 patients on any given day,” he said.

Another complaint he heard from the lobby concerned worker safety.

Hospital service staff had been accustomed to using several different types of cleaning agents for different types of tasks – one for feces, blood and sputum, another for toilets and another for glass, for example. Now they have only two kinds of cleaners to draw from, leading to suspicion as to whether things are really being properly disinfected.

Thin trash bags that easily break were another problem for workers handling waste in a hospital environment.

“They’re just trying to buy the cheapest things they can find,” said Pilar Burgess, a service staffer who is sister-in-law to Michael Burgess.

Students from UCLA organizations Consciencia Libre and the Environmental Coalition joined in the protest.

“There are many students on this campus in full support of what the workers are demanding. They shouldn’t be a sub-class of workers,” Kirsten Isaacson, Environmental Coalition president, told Speare.

Speare said he was open to hearing details of worker grievances in further discussions.

“There are a lot of issues that you raise that I can’t solve in the lobby of the second floor of this building,” Speare said.

“Bring it to the table. You don’t have to bring it to the big table up north (with UC negotiators in Oakland). Bring it to the table locally,” he added.

After a rhythmic clap, with chants of “or we’ll be back...we’ll be back...we’ll be back,” the workers peacefully left the building.

Speare later said he wants to hear more about worker concerns. A meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday.

He added that the hospital is self-supporting and that the federal Balanced Budget Act has resulted in a cut in Medicare reimbursements, leading to tough times for UCLA’s Medical Center and other hospitals around the country.

As for worker safety issues: “Maybe we can set up a mechanism where we do joint environmental rounds (inspecting the hospital). If people want a better work environment, I think we’d be very interested in pursuing that,” Speare said.